Few things break my heart more than stories of child abuse. I can’t help but wonder—if some of those children had been taught more about their bodies and how to respond to uncomfortable situations, could their stories have been different?

This blog is my effort to empower you, as parents, with knowledge and tools to help prevent childhood sexual abuse. Here’s a powerful fact: 95% of childhood sexual abuse is preventable through education. That’s an incredible statistic—and it means there’s real hope. So, let’s get educated.

The Reality of Childhood Sexual Abuse

According to a 2023 news release from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP):

• 1 in 3 females and 1 in 6 males will experience sexual assault or abuse before the age of 17.
• Many abusers hold positions of trust—teachers, family friends, coaches, church leaders, and even family members.
• While we often think of adults as the perpetrators, up to 40% of child sexual abuse cases involve older, more powerful children.

This isn’t something we can afford to ignore. But the good news? We can take action—starting now.
The AAP has outlined key steps we can take as parents to help protect our children. Here are a few critical ones:

1 – Use Proper Terminology for Body Parts

Teach your children the correct names for all body parts, including private areas. Make it clear that private parts should always be covered by clothing or swimsuits and should never be touched without permission.

2 – Encourage Modesty at Home

As children grow and their bodies change, they should feel comfortable setting boundaries. Let them know it’s okay to be private about their bodies and that modesty is a personal choice, not something to be ashamed of. This mindset will help them develop healthy social boundaries as well.

3 – Don’t Force Affection

This one is tough. We love hugs from our kids, and we want them to show affection to family and friends. But children should understand that their bodies belong to them. They should never feel pressured to give hugs or kisses—even to grandparents. Encourage alternatives, like high-fives or thumbs-up, so they have ways to express warmth while maintaining their personal comfort.  Talk to your kids and other family friends and explain that you’ve given your child choices about how to show affection.  We know that some days our kids are overflowing with affection but other days they just don’t feel it.  Give them the power to choose how they show affection and let those around them who are wanting affection let them know why you are supporting them.

4 – Teach “OK Touches” vs. “Not-OK Touches”

Most physical contact is normal—like bathing, diaper changes, or medical care. However, "not-OK touches" include anything involving private parts (without a medical or caregiving reason), as well as any touch that feels uncomfortable, painful, or scary. This also applies to how they touch others. One powerful way to reinforce this is by creating a Family Rule about personal boundaries—kids respond well to clear, consistent rules.

5 – Encourage Open Communication

Children must know that no matter what anyone says, they will NEVER be in trouble for speaking up about a “not-OK touch.” Reinforce that they should always tell a trusted adult if something makes them uncomfortable.

6 – Keep the Conversation Going

This isn’t a one-time talk. Revisit these discussions regularly—when bathing them, before doctor visits, before daycare, dance class, or camp. The more you review, the more empowered and confident your child will be.

By taking these steps, we can create a safer world for our children. Let’s commit to educating ourselves and empowering our kids.

Here is a link to the full AAP article if you’d like to dive deeper.
 
www.contemporarypediatrics.com/view/aap-tips-for-teaching-children-about-body-boundaries-and-safety


Let’s work together to change the statistics and protect our children.

How much can a 2-, 3- or 4-year-old do?  What can they do?  They’re so little, right?  A toddler?  A preschooler?  What’s reasonable?  What’s not?   Are you doing too much as a parent? 
 
All good questions for sure that most of us struggle with!  In this podcast I want to explore what’s reasonable to encourage and train young kids to do.  So much of our parenting is done as a shoot-from-the-hip reaction.  While that might get things done it often interferes with the growth not only of an independent mindset but also a child’s self-esteem and self-concept.  Yikes!  They need those things!  Getting them prepared for long-term life skills should always be on our to-do list of goals as parents so that we don’t get stuck with grown kids who can’t leave the house.
 
Many parents lean toward “my kid isn’t old enough” with toddlers and preschoolers for certain tasks but sometimes it’s hard to tell.  I’ve collected a sample list of things that I feel are reasonable for kids who are in the 2- to 4-year-old age range to do.  I hope you’ll challenge yourself to add a few of these skills for your child to learn.  Take note of the activities that might be a stretch and get some plans in place to up their independence! 
 
Let’s get started!
 
Things Kids 2 to 4 Can Do
In these preschool years there’s so many opportunities and I’ve sorted them into 5 different categories . 

1. Personal Accomplishments – they can do themselves for themselves
   • Feed themselves – maybe graduate to serving themselves
     There should be no running after your kids with a spoon or fork trying to get food into their tummies.  Listen to podcast #4 if you struggle with this
   • Pack their backpack – water, snacks, sweater  
     Even a 2-year-old knows what a water bottle looks like.  Let them pick their snacks and put them in their backpack. 
   • Help make their bed just pulling up sheets or blankets
     Yep, just keep it simple. 
   • Pick out their clothes
     If they don’t match, it’s ok.  Teach them to match if it’s important to you but help them learn how to pick.
   • Putting their clothes in the hamper
     Every kid should have a place to put their dirty clothes.  Allow your child to pick out a basket that will be theirs if it helps.  Let them know it’s their job to fill it, not mom and dads.
   • Washing their hands
     They should know how to get to soap and a stool to climb to the sink.  How to turn on and off the water and dry their hands.  Yes, every one of those steps is possible with encouragement and easy access.
2. Family Contributions – contribute to the whole family
   • Setting the table for a meal
     You’ll have to teach them where to get things or set out a stack of silverware or whatever but have them help.  Keep the items in low cabinets if you can so they can get them out if possible.
   • Clearing their dishes
     Teach your kids how to carry plates and cups without spilling.  Let them at least put them on the counter.
   • Vacuum using a small hand vacuum
     This seems to be one task most really little kids love more than any other.  Running around sucking up things and creating noise is just too hard to resist.  If your vacuum is large you might have to settle for a dustbuster size vacuum until they’re a bit older.
   • Dust shelves, baseboards, counters
     They might not be the best dust minders but they should be taught this very simple skill.
   • Helping fold laundry like socks
     I personally never liked folding socks but teaching this skill is good for learning patterns and matching in addition to being helpful.
   • Load laundry and start the machine
     Here’s another one that surprised me.  Let your child push that laundry into the tub and, if they can reach, start the machine.  Again, nothing like the power of seeing things move when buttons are pushed. 
   • Unload some dishes
     When I asked my friend with two young girls she added this one to my list for 2-4 year olds.  Her younger daughter started at a very young age.  For some reason she just really likes unloading.  It’s so cute. Mom was wise and let her!
   • Wash windows
     They might be a bit smeared but, again, who doesn’t like a spray bottle and being told to spray all over something?  Such fun and skill building at the same time. 
   • Simple pet care tasks – brushing, feeding
     If you have a cat or dog, let your little one help.  You feel free to guide and tell them the time a task needs to be done but train them in things like were to get the dry food, how to scoop it in the bowl, how to clean it up when it spills, how to put new water in the bowl. 
   • Simple cooking and kitchen related tasks
     These can certainly help teach pincer skills, coordination and refine motor skills.  How about:
     • Stirring a cake mix
       What fun making something sweet!
     • Opening snack bags, squeezables
       Another yummy skill to have
3. Outdoor Tasks
   There’s nothing like being outdoors in nice weather.  Teach your kids to enjoy it too!
   • Pull weeds
   • Rake leaves
   • Water plants --  You might have to augment the watering they do but, please, let them have that hose to water or a small rake to gather leaves.
4. Personal Management beyond educational opportunities like ABCs and learning to count
   • Solo Playtime – teach your child they can play by themselves
     One mom did an excellent job of letting her daughter have “quiet time” in her room.  She was starting to outgrow naps, but it was important that she know she can entertain herself quietly especially with a younger sibling who did need a nap and a mom who needed to have some downtime.  You can set a timer so your child knows when their solo time is over in about 20-40 minutes, not hours and hours.
   • “Reading” Time – schedule time for them to “read” books
     This is like Solo Playtime, but it involves just books and an opportunity to “read” them on their own.  You can still have book time at bedtime, but they should be able to read a few books quietly on their own. 
   • Use a Balance Bike
     I love this new type of bike that wasn’t around when my boys were little.  If you don’t have one yet, get one.  I just saw someone online giving one away on NextDoor for free even. They are a great way to teach balance and get them ready to ride a two-wheeler bike.
5. Lastly, I want to talk about: Being an Assistant to Mom or Dad – there’s nothing kids like more than to hang out with you, right?  To leverage this, you want to approach any chore they’re “too little” for with fun and enthusiasm so they want to join in with you.  Do these mundane tasks with your child with joy and they’ll be joyful too.  The key is starting early enough and making it joyful and expected will make things a smooth transition into when these chores become their chores when they are older instead of trying to get older kids to get over the shock of being handed chores when they’d never done them before, and you’d done all of them yourself. 
   • Help make a meal – get out supplies, spread pbj, chop fruit or veggies with special kid’s knives, crack eggs.  These are all things I think a preschooler can do.
   • Help pick up dog poop
     You’re going to giggle and squeal with them as you find the poop and scoop it with a scooper.  You’re also going to thank them profusely and congratulate them on what a great help they are to the family.
   • Help take out the trash
     You’ll have the same enthusiasm as the dog poop task.
   • Garden – sweep, dig, plant
     “Wow! This is so helpful!  Working with you is so much fun.  I love being a part of this family who helps each other!” are the types of things you’ll be saying as you do the task together.
   • Clean – bathroom, mop floor
     I think you get the idea here. 

 
If you’ve gotten this far into the podcast, I want to offer a more abbreviated list for 4 – 6-year-olds so that you have an idea of where you should be headed in the future.  Feel free to add them when they’re younger if you can! 
 
Things Kids 4 to 6 Can Do

1. Personal Accomplishments – they can do themselves for themselves
   • Brush their teeth and hair
   • Dress themselves
   • Cut their nails
2. Family Contributions – contribute to the whole family
   • Get drinks for meals
   • Clear the table
   • Load a dishwasher with simple cups and plates
   • Unload dishwasher all the way
   • Get simple snacks
   • Put away clothes
   • Help fold laundry for pants, shirts
   • Vacuum a room
   • Clean bathrooms – wipe mirrors, clean toilets, sweep floors
3. Larger Roles as an Assistant
   • Help plan a meal or dessert
   • Use a Microwave with Supervision
   • Help shop for ingredients
   • Meal prep – cut using kid-friendly tools – grapes, strawberries, cheese, etc
   • Bake a box cake – mix, measure and prep pan, set timer to bake
   • Make waffles or pancakes
   • Make a PBJ
   • Make coffee for mom and dad using a Kerig or Nespresso machine
     my friend’s daughter loves using her Nespresso machine to make mom coffee!
4. Outdoor Tasks
   • Plant and take care of an outdoor garden
   • Clean up dog poop by themselves
5. Ride a Two-Wheeler
6. Have Drop-Off Play Dates with known friends
   ​
   

I know there’s more I could add but hopefully I’ve given you some nice ideas to try.  The list will be on my blog and in the show notes so have a look.  If you send me an email with other suggestions of what you’d add I’d love to give you a free parent coaching session.  Send email to [email protected].

In my last podcast I talked about grumpy kids, but I realized that it’s not only grumpy kids that need connections to their parents.  They ALL do!  Kids need to feel that unconditional love that we all want to give them.  We’re made to want that but, for some of us in our hurried and busy lives with work and school commitments, we just find it really hard to set aside the time to just “be” with our kids, one-on-one style.
 
So many times in the last 10 years of working with parents, I’ve seen how families are changed in dramatic ways when parents take the time to slow down and connect.  In this podcast I want to throw out some ideas and maybe one or two will stick with you so that you can take a step toward better connection.  This podcast focuses on young kids from about 2 years old until 10, just before they get to the tween stage of life where your sweet child might turn into someone you don’t recognize. 
 
Even if you’re kids are “doing ok” – they’re friends are ok, their grades are ok, their social and church activities are ok, they still need special time with YOU, just YOU.  If you want to rock parenting, connecting is going to be your superpower!
 
1 – Number 1, if you have young kids START YOUNG, as early as 2 years old.  It’s usually pretty easy to play games, build forts and snuggle while reading books at young ages. 
2 – Next, you have to connect INDIVIDUALLY with each of your kids, you can’t “group them” to get the connection battery recharged

First, I’ll give you some “quick” connection ideas then ideas for longer connections that I call “dates”.
 
QUICK CONNECTIONS
Some psychologists say that a minimum connection of 10 minutes per day per kid is the best approach to keep the connection battery charged where they feel safe, connected and loved.  It’s not enough to just take them to the playground and watch them play, you have to fully immerse yourself with them in play.  I know, it’s hard, but if your kid feels connected, things go so much more smoothly, trust me.  When one kid gets dysregulated, the entire household often moves in that same direction.  The trick is you can’t do it as a group, it needs to be one adult to one kid.  Hard for families of multiples, right?
 
I had one mom who had two boys, 1st and 3rd grade.  She noticed that her boys struggled to get her attention and would start getting annoyed at her and each other as they came home from school.  Since there were no loving boundaries around playing with mom both boys just wanted her all the time.  She’s a smart mom and former teacher so she decided to talk to the boys about making a schedule, a little Family Meeting.  They decided that after school each boy would get 100% of her time to play whatever they could for 15 minutes then the boys would swap places.  They talked about quiet activities to do while waiting and came up with consequences if one boy decided to interrupt.  I know, a lot of set up work but, it worked wonders!  Both boys knew they had mom and could fill up their connection battery and tell her about their day and how they were feeling while playing Legos or setting up blocks. 
 
I’m not saying you have to do what that one mom did, the takeaway is that she did SOMETHING.  What can YOU do in a short amount of time whether its daily or weekly?

I love the article 30 Joyful Ways to Connect with Your Child in 10 Minutes from the blog OneTimeThrough.  I love Sue’s ideas!  Here are just a few but take a peek at the article for all 30 ideas:

• Chase Games – yep, just run around the house.  Who is “it”?  Kids laugh and squeal so easily!
• Hide-and-seek – a perennial favorite for all kids in the 2 to 10 age range.  I know I have a hard time staying engaged in this one myself, but kids LOVE it.
• Wrestling – as long as it doesn’t get too rough, this act of physical connection can be really nurturing and meaningful.
• Dancing or Marching to Music –just pick a few favorite songs and dance or march around.
• Floor Play – get on the ground and play Legos or blocks or Hot Wheels or Barbie.  Just get down on their level.
• Cooking, baking, reading, a special snack, watching the weather go by, there are all sorts of ideas!

There’s another online resource is an article with from TalkingParents.com with 56 MORE ideas, both short and long.  I just want you to have ideas if you feel you need them. 
 
LONG CONNECTIONS aka “Dates”
Now I want to move on to setting up time for deeper connections.  If you ask me, it’s really, really helpful and builds meaningful connections in ways that the quick connections like I just talked about start but can’t quite go to the next level.  What am I talking about?
 
Setting up one-on-one “dates” with your kids.  Yep.  A date.  Yep, with only one kid.  If you have one kid, it’s pretty easy but you need to rotate with your spouse, no third wheels allowed on these dates.  Your spouse goes on the next date with your child, not on your date.  If you have two kids, divide them between you and then rotate the next date so each child gets time with each parent. 
 
If you’re blessed to have more than two, you’re going to have to divide and conquer.  I have one friend with four kids who works a lot but one Saturday afternoon a month he takes one kid out for an entire afternoon for kid directed activities, just two of them.  His kids need to wait four months for their next turn, but they are overjoyed that dad makes extra special time even if it’s only once every four months.  I must admit, I didn’t grow up with a memory of even one event with one of my parents.  My parents had a lot of kids but, boy, how I would have loved to have extra special attention from one of my parents.  How would you have felt?
 
What is it that you’d do with your kid on a date?  Great question.  Something fun, doesn’t have to be expensive but your kid needs to want to do it or at least tolerate it.  It should be kid-lead as much as possible.  If your kid loves to hike, then hike.  If they hate hiking, then maybe you’ll go to a place and paint pottery.  Maybe you’ll go putt-putt golfing, or to a lake and rent a rowboat.  Maybe you go on a camping trip or an interesting bike ride. Maybe it just rained, and you go someplace to make mud pies and get dirty on purpose.  Maybe you go some park or large field and collect slugs or butterflies.  Maybe you go the beach.  Maybe you get your nails painted, yep, even dads can paint their nails.  If you let your daughter pick the colors for your fingers or toes, extra credit! 
 
I have an adorable dad friend who dresses up and even wears a tie while his 5-year-old daughter gets on her fanciest dress to go out to dinner, just the two of them.  It could be to MacDonalds or Panera, doesn’t have to be the Ritz.  His daughter is beaming the entire time. 
 
Taking the time to set up dates with your kids takes time, takes energy.  I totally get it.  But I want you to think about a friend or family member who has a tween or teen who doesn’t even want to be seen with their parents, who’d rather be on electronics than have a conversation.  Maybe YOU were a teen like that!  As a parent it is a painful and frustrating time of worry and fear and at the same time you might ask yourself: “What did I do wrong?”. 
 
Invest now in time with them.  Make it fun.  Make it meaningful.  Make it regular even if it’s only twice a year.  You’ve just got to believe me on faith that it’ll pay off in the long run.  If you start while they’re young then the connection will grow with them as they move into becoming tweens and teens.  Super special to have a way to connect as they get to more challenging times of life!
 
I love Nike’s saying JUST DO IT!
 
That’s all for now.  
 
If you have a teen or tween, look for my next podcast, 65, to get specific ideas on how to connect with them.

Listen to AUDIO of PODCAST 61 

Bullying… what a gulp of a topic, right?  It’s hard enough on those of us who might have been bullied or been exposed to others who were bullied when we were kids but when it’s your own child, it’s like being pierced in the heart.  It can make a normal parent turn into a tiger parent in a flash.  It’s confusing.  It’s heart breaking.  Who knows what to do? What’s the RIGHT thing as a parent to do?  Good question!  I’m not a therapist but I have been doing some research that will hopefully help point you in the right direction for good resources if you think your child is being bullied.
 
First off, there are some great resources online.  I’ve reviewed quite a few and have put hotlinks in the podcast and blog notes so you can find them easily.  Stopbullying.org and Kidshealth.org stand out as well as the UK’s Pacer.org.

Definition of Bullying

One confusing issue is when we suspect our child is being bullied, how do we know it’s “bullying” and not just normal teasing.  When we were kids, I’m assuming you all went through hurt feelings like I did when I wasn’t invited to a party or friends did something without me in secret.  Someone might have stolen your sandwich or called you a bad name on the playground.  Maybe you got pushed out of a seat on the bus.  I’m sure there’s a list of other things that happened to you that I can’t even being to guess.  Most of us somehow managed to get through but in today’s culture bullying seems, like everything else, to have been raised up a notch.  There’s more and there’s new types of online bullying to include in the mix.  Ugh.  

In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Department of Education released the first federal definition of bullying. It has three core elements:

• unwanted aggressive behavior
• observed or perceived power imbalance
• repetition or high likelihood of repetition of bullying behaviors

This definition helps determine whether an incident is bullying or another type of aggressive behavior like peer conflict or if it’s both.
 
I want to give you a more concrete examples of bullying so that you know it’s a wide set of possibilities as you think about the issues your own child faces. 

Types of Bullying

• Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:
  • Teasing
  • Name-calling
  • Inappropriate sexual comments
  • Taunting
  • Threatening to cause harm
• Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:
  • Leaving someone out on purpose
  • Telling other children not to be friends with someone
  • Spreading rumors about someone
  • Embarrassing someone in public
• Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions. Physical bullying includes:
  • Hitting/kicking/pinching
  • Spitting
  • Tripping/pushing
  • Taking or breaking someone’s things
  • Making mean or rude hand gestures

For kids, bullying can occur during or after school hours. While most reported bullying happens in the school building, it  also happens in places like on the playground, travelling to or from school, in your neighborhood, or in today’s culture, unfortunately, 24/7 on the Internet.  Let’s talk about that specifically…

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying.  It’s bullying that takes place over digital devices. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behavior especially in areas of sexting and porn.

Cyberbullying has unique concerns in that it can be:

·       Persistent – Digital devices offer an ability to immediately and continuously communicate 24 hours a day, so it can be difficult for children experiencing cyberbullying to find relief.  One friend’s child got over 300 mean posts in one day. It was relentless and caused the family to shut down all their child’s social media.

·       Permanent – Most information communicated electronically is permanent and public, if not reported and removed. Our kids don’t seem to understand that.  A negative online reputation, including for those who bully, can impact college admissions, employment, and other areas of life.

·       Hard to Notice – Because teachers and parents may not overhear or see cyberbullying taking place, it is harder to recognize.

It’s tough.

Why do kids bully?
 
Sometimes they pick on kids because they need a victim — someone who seems emotionally or physically weaker, or just acts or appears different in some way — they want to feel more important, popular, or in control.
 
Sometimes kids torment others because that's the way they've been treated. They may think their behavior is normal because they come from families or other settings where everyone regularly gets angry and shouts or calls each other names.  I know when my kids play online games there a LOT of trash talking that’s in fun but, I’m guessing, some kids don’t find it so amusing.
 
How do you know if your kid is being bullied?
It’s tough unless your kid tells you, that’s for sure.  Some of my friends said they just didn’t see the signs since they didn’t think bullying could happen to their kid.  Hopefully that won’t be you.  But here are some signs to look for:

• acting differently or seeming anxious
• not eating, not sleeping well, or not doing the things they usually enjoy
• seem moodier or more easily upset than usual
• avoiding certain situations (like going to school or taking the bus to school)

What Can Families Do?
It's really important to take bullying seriously and not just brush it off as something that kids have to "tough out." The effects can be serious and affect kids' sense of safety and self-worth. In severe cases, bullying has contributed to tragedies, such as suicides and school shootings.  The families I interviewed for this podcast admitted that it would have made a huge difference if they took the small warning signs more seriously instead of brushing them off.

If your child tells you about being bullied, listen calmly and offer comfort and support. Kids are often reluctant to tell adults about bullying because they feel embarrassed and ashamed that it's happening, or worry that their parents will be disappointed, upset, angry, or reactive.  One family I’m working with, the child won’t give the names of the perpetrators since he is so scared of retaliation. 

Sometimes kids feel like it's their own fault, that if they looked or acted differently it wouldn't be happening. Others are worried that their parents won't believe them or do anything about it. Or kids worry that their parents will urge them to fight back when they're scared to.

·      First, make sure you let your kid know on a regular basis that they can come to you with anything.  That you promise to listen.  This is often tough set up but it is essential for you to have a trusting relationship so that your kid can come to you with hard stuff.
·      When your child does come to you, praise them for doing the right thing by talking to you about it.
·      Remind your child that they're not alone — a lot of people get bullied at some point.
·      Explain that it's the bully who is behaving badly — not them.
·      Have them document the bullying behavior on paper in their own words.  Such written testimony is crucial if things escalate further.
·      Reassure them that you will figure out what to do about it together.

In surveys, most kids and teens say that bullying happens at school. Let someone at school (the principal, school nurse, or a counselor or teacher) know about the situation. Often, they can watch and take steps to prevent further problems.  It doesn’t always help but it’s worth a try.

Role Playing and Brainstorming with Your Child
Kidshealth.org offers a great list of ideas to go over with your child to prepare them for dealing with a bully and give power back to them so they aren’t so overwhelmed with the situation.  I’d encourage you to go over this list of ideas with your child and brainstorm what ones would work for them.  Maybe role play how they would use one or more of the approaches.

• Tell an adult. Teachers, principals, parents, and lunchroom personnel at school can all help stop bullying.
• Avoid the bully and use the buddy system. Use a different bathroom if a bully is nearby and don't go to your locker if nobody else is around. Make sure you have someone with you so that you're not alone with the bully. Buddy up with a friend on the bus, in the hallways, or at recess — wherever the bully is. Offer to do the same for a friend.
• Hold the anger. It's natural to get upset by the bully, but that's what bullies thrive on. It makes them feel more powerful. Practice not reacting by crying or looking red or upset. It takes a lot of practice, but it's a useful skill for keeping off of a bully's radar. Sometimes kids find it useful to practice "cool down" strategies such as counting to 10, writing down their angry words, taking deep breaths, or walking away. Sometimes the best thing to do is to teach kids to keep their face calm until they are clear of any danger (smiling or laughing may provoke the bully).
• Act brave, walk away, and ignore the bully. Firmly and clearly tell the bully to stop, then walk away. Practice ways to ignore the hurtful remarks, like acting uninterested or texting someone on your cellphone. By ignoring the bully, you're showing that you don't care. Eventually, the bully will probably get bored with trying to bother you.
• Talk about it. Talk to someone you trust, such as a guidance counselor, teacher, sibling, or friend. They may offer some helpful suggestions. Even if they can't fix the situation, it may help you feel a little less alone.

 
Stopbullying.gov has a helpful list of Dos and Don’ts for adults who are in a school or other team environment where the bully or bullies are known and available for questioning.   Here's a link if you’re an adult in that situation.  BULLYING RESPONSE LIST LINK HERE 

Cyberbullying, special notes
I do want to take time to talk about steps in dealing with cyberbullying issues.

• First off, you want to have your child document the incident.  A particular incident might be a one-off but having screen shots of the mean remarks or doctored photos or whatever can be crucial to proving a pattern of cyberbullying that could be useful later.
  
  
• Cyberbullying is “intent to harm” focused.  Did the perpetrator intentionally cause harm or was it an innocent mistake. 
  
  What do I mean?  If your child’s friend takes a funny photo of your child and posts it on social media and they both think it’s funny at the time but then it gets re-posted with mean comments from others, it’s certainly a problem.  However, if the friend, when approached, is willing to take down photo and prevent further harm it would be chalked up as a mistake.  If the friend posted it, made mean comments about your child then forwarded it around on purpose and it continued to get forwarded around, that’s cyberbullying.  It’s nasty and it’s way too easy for a teen or tween with poor control over emotions to make bad choices over what they post. 

 
Mental Health and Building Confidence
Bottomline, dealing with bullying can hurt a child's confidence and self-worth.   To help rebuild it, be there for your kids.  Encourage your kids to spend time with friends who have a positive influence. Participation in clubs, sports, or other enjoyable activities builds strength and friendships. Get them mental health resources if they need extra support. 

When my boys were in high school there was a girl who had been drunk at a party.  Her photos and story were passed around via texting.  She was shattered.  She felt hopeless and alone.  She wound up committing suicide.  Bullying and cyberbullying affects mental health.  You need to make sure your child’s story is one of hope and resilience. 

Provide a listening ear about tough situations but encourage your kids to also tell you about the good parts of their day and listen attentively so that open communication becomes a habit for everyone. Make sure they know you believe in them and that you'll do what you can to address any bullying together. 

The one thing I always tell parents that will make their parenting job easier is to keep communication open.  If your child has a trusting relationship with you then bullying should never get out of control. 

If you need help building your relationship or access to mental health referals, please contact me at [email protected].  I have lots of podcasts as well as YouTube videos that can help and can connect you with professional help if you need it. 

​If you’d like an audio of this blog, go to my Podcast, Parenting Decoded.  

Resources:

• https://router-network.com/education/anti-bullying-guide
• https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/bullies.html
• https://www.pacer.org/bullying/
• https://www.stopbullying.gov/

These are notes from Jessica O’Connor, LMFT, who was interviewed for Parenting Decoded’s Podcast 56- Separation Anxiety.  There are so many great thoughts from her that I wanted to include them in my blog.  Enjoy!

Separation Anxiety – definition and description:

Separation anxiety is defined as recurring and excessive fear or worry about being separated from one’s attachment figure, like a parent. Features of separation anxiety include distress, worry that their attachment figure will come to some harm when separated, worry about being kidnapped or lost, refusal to leave home, reluctance to be left alone, difficulty sleeping without the parent, nightmares about separation, physical symptoms such as headaches, stomachaches, nausea or vomiting with separation or anticipated separation.  This fear, anxiety, or avoidance lasts more than 4 weeks in children and adolescents or 6 months or more for adults.

Separation anxiety can increase during times of transition or following a break from school. It can happen after a stressful life event, such as moving, changing schools, or a death in the family.  One recent event that all children experienced in some form has been the COVID-19 pandemic.

Have you ever played the game Chutes and Ladders? The Chutes and Ladders game can be used as a metaphor for development. Rungs on the ladders represent growth and development. It’s common that a child might miss a rung, and that’s ok because children are resilient and can reach for the next rung to keep climbing.  What happens when a child misses more than one rung of development? When the gap between rungs is too great, time can help. With time a child continues to grow and have lived experiences and can build a bridge to cover the gap.  A parent can also help by going back in time and rebuilding those rungs with their child. 

Some signs that your child may be experiencing separation anxiety are school refusal, crying at drop-off, physically clinging to parents, avoiding going to birthday parties, camp, or participating in extracurricular activities.

Separation anxiety, like the other types of anxiety, is not always abnormal; Sometimes, it’s actually advantageous. Since we all feel anxious from time to time, it’s not about eliminating separation anxiety. It’s more about moving through it and not having it get too big. We often talk about “controlling” our emotions, but what happens when we try to control our emotions is that they demand to be felt, and they get bigger. Instead of trying to control our emotions, we can focus on living with and moving through them. We all have everyday ups and downs; we’ll consider what to do in those moments of separation anxiety.

Individual differences

We need to keep in mind that every child has individual differences; these are the things that make us unique and special. The things that make you, you. Children navigate their world through their own lenses.  When discussing a topic like separation anxiety, it’s important to consider your child’s individual differences. How do they see the world? How do they make sense of the information coming in from their environments, and what do they give back to the environment in return?  When thinking about how to help support your child through separation anxiety, it’s necessary to think through how they move through the world in their everyday lives.  No one knows a child better than the parent; By the way, I use the term parent to mean any adult that acts as a primary caregiver in a child’s life. With separation anxiety, it can be any attachment figure; it can be a parent, grandparent, coach, teacher, sibling, etc.

Questions About Separation Anxiety

-Is there a difference between anxiety and separation anxiety?

You can think of anxiety like a house, and separation anxiety is a room in that house. Separation anxiety is a specific type of anxiety that we feel. Everyone experiences anxiety since it is a normal human emotion.  Separation anxiety occurs situationally in separation scenarios.

- Can you talk about separation anxiety by age from toddler through preschool:
​
Separation anxiety in younger years is common. In fact, separation anxiety early in the lifespan is functional.  It’s normal for children ages 9 months to around 18 months of age to experience separation anxiety. Humans are not born into this world able to care for and provide for themselves. Babies are born dependent on their primary caregiver for survival. Separating from the person who kept you alive from birth up until that point is an anxiety-provoking event, especially if the environment is new and the child does not know what to expect. Young children can be clingy and follow their parent around.

Being prepared for the first day back to school is more than just having your lunch box and backpack ready. It’s about being emotionally prepared too.  One of the best ways to help your child be emotionally prepared is by talking to them about what to expect. Validating your child’s fears, worries, and concerns is important. It’s okay for your child to feel their feelings.  It’s ok to feel separation anxiety-- we just don’t want it to get too big to the point where it impacts their day and the day of those around them.  As children get older, autonomy, or independence, increases. For a child with separation anxiety, this independence can be scary and unwelcome. 

-How does separation anxiety differ as children get older?

Children ages 5 years to around 8 years old most commonly report fear or worry about their attachment figure being harmed if separated.

Children ages 9-12 years experience withdrawal, sadness and/or poor concentration when separated.

Adolescents ages 13-16 years will have more physical somatic complaints and school refusal.

- What can a parent do to help manage/overcome separation anxiety -- known tips and tricks, role playing, whatever:

First, identify in what situations the separation anxiety is occurring. Is it only at school, or does it happen all the time? When we think about a child’s individual differences and the information coming in through their senses, it can be helpful to make sure that what is happening actually is separation anxiety and not something else like sensory processing disorder, some things to try:

• Talk about school at home. Helping a child know what to expect and setting up the stage for a familiar experience can help.
• Always say goodbye with confidence
• Use a clock to show them when you will be back
• Read children’s books on the subject with them
• Have playdates with friends and parents to practice separating in the least stressful situation as possible
• Practice at home: Exposure to separating in a safe and controlled way can give your child the experience of separating when they know it is going to be ok. Start with the least anxiety-provoking experiences possible. Can your child talk about separating? Or look at pictures of their primary caretaker at work? Then gradually increase to more separation moments. Can you walk into another room and back?

I have seen an increase in separation anxiety in my practice. Some of this may be due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  If you think about normal childhood development without a pandemic, there are many opportunities for separation exposure. For example, when your baby is in the shopping cart at the grocery store, and you step a few feet away to grab a bag of apples, your child experiences the foundational building blocks of healthy separation.  With enough practice, your child feels comfortable with you leaving and returning and does not feel upset or dysregulated when this happens.

- When does the scale tip to being too much for a parent to handle without professional help?

When separation anxiety is disruptive to daily functioning, that’s when it’s time to seek professional help.  And you don’t have to wait that long.  Children come to my office for a variety of reasons, and it’s not always because there is a problem or something is wrong.  Therapy with children is positive and strength-based.  We focus on promoting self-esteem, self-value, self-compassion, and self-confidence.  And these are things that every child can come to our office to work on.

- If my child has separation anxiety, are they more likely to have anxiety as they age?

Not necessarily, and with proactive parenting and supporting your child through their anxious moments, you can increase their emotional regulation toolbox and help them to navigate and mediate future anxious moments

- Tips for working with teachers and caregivers

• Communication is the greatest tool in your parenting toolbox. Teachers and caregivers got into their lines of work for the love of working with children.  Collaborating on a plan is important.  Is it possible to meet the teacher one-on-one? Can the parent stay or volunteer in the classroom? Daycares, preschools, and grade schools should be safe environments for children. Knowing your child’s individual differences, ask yourself what you think your child needs.
• Ask the child what they need - If they are old enough to talk, then even better, ask your child what they need in that space to feel safe and comfortable. I think sometimes well-meaning adults get together to talk about what a child needs and sometimes forget to ask the child themselves what they think. Their answers may surprise you.
  
  

- How can we deal with the stress on ourselves as parents during bouts of separation anxiety?

This is a really good question. When a child gets emotionally activated or dysregulated, the parent will naturally become elevated as well.  This is connected to the idea of a parent protecting their child. If your child perceives a threat and their flight, flight or freeze system is activated, as is the case of separation anxiety, then your system becomes activated too, so you are better able to protect your child from the perceived threat. Put another way, it is normal to become dysregulated when your child is dysregulated, and there is a very good reason for that, but it can be really hard to go through at the same time.

One thing that can be helpful to the parent living through this experience is to remind yourself that children can only learn to self-regulate when they can see the people around them being calm or self-regulated.  If your child is having a bout of anxiety at an early age, this is an opportunity for emotional regulation development. Remember, it’s ok to feel our feelings. Parents can model effective calming strategies by talking out loud about their own calm-down strategies.  It’s ok for a parent to say, “I’m feeling nervous about this new interview, and I’m going to take a deep breath, tell myself I can do this, and think about getting the job.”

Anyone with a teenager knows that if you tell your child to do something, they are very likely to do something else entirely. Instead, one of the best ways to teach your child how to navigate the world is by showing them how you do it.  If you have been their primary caregiver for quite some time, chances are your child will be helped by the same things that help you. Ask yourself, how do I calm my anxiety? Your healthy regulation strategies are likely to be helpful to your child as well. I also try to remind parents that if you or your child is getting it right, that’s great, and if you or your child isn’t getting it right, that’s even better because those are moments in which we grow.  If everything goes right all the time, there is nothing to learn.  In our mistakes, we learn and grow and develop alongside our children.  The journey of development is not exclusive to youth.  We are all developing across our lifespan, and if we do so with curiosity, compassion, and suspended judgment, then we can move through life’s everyday ups and downs, and we will be all right.
 
Bio:

Jessica O’Connor is a licensed marriage and family therapist and supervisor with over ten years of education and experience working with children, parents, and families. She has a Master of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Arts in Infant and Early Childhood Development with an emphasis in Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities and a concentration in Reflective Practice. She is currently working in private practice in Campbell, California, and is a 3rd year doctoral student doing a dissertation on bullying perpetration. She is a contributor to the children’s book Wildfire! Kameika & Joey Prepare, and she enjoys giving presentations to parents and educators across the Bay Area. She lives in the Los Gatos mountains with her husband, two sons, two dogs, a fish, and nine chickens.

To reach Jessica go to her website at: www.jessicaoconnor.org.

Disclosure: This information is not intended to be medical or mental health treatment advice. It’s important to talk to your child’s doctor or therapist about concerns you are having about their mental health.
If you or your child are experiencing significant amounts of stress here is the phone number for 24/7 National Helpline for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration:
1-800-662-HELP (4357)

AUDIO PODCAST HERE

There’s nothing more gross in my mind than sitting and eating with an adult who eats with their mouth open. I had a colleague at work years ago who did it so often it was talked about behind his back and some people avoided having lunch with him.  Yikes!  He was in his late twenties!  I think we all fear that our kids will grow into such food spewing adults who are avoided like the plague but, what do we do?  Some of you have kids who are already tweens or teens which makes the challenge harder but, in this blog post, we’ll go over some ideas on how you can do a course correction no matter what the age.
 
I do have to start out saying that, like just about every parenting issue, the earlier you start the easier things will be in the long run.  Preschool is a great time to start manners training but don’t be discouraged if you have older kids. 

 1 – Talk about it. 
Communicating with your family expectations about any activity you do is really key so put chewing food into that same category.  It’s a Life Skill you need to teach.  You need to explain the both why they need to chew with mouths closed and what that looks like so that everyone is on the same page. 
You can have small discussions with just one child during a meal or, if you feel you haven’t been clear with your entire family, then have a Family Meeting and talk about chewing manners.  Here are some ideas in how to approach chewing food. 
 

• Start with BASIC SKILLS: Some kids shove too much food in their mouths so practice taking small bites.  Go over what sized pieces are expected for different types of foods.  Include examples of foods you grab with your hands like pizza and apples vs. a bowl of cereal or pasta.  You could give everyone a knife and have them cut whatever it is into bite-sized pieces to make sure the learning is going well. 


• Next, include some FUN AND GAMES: You can play games where kids earn points, be creative and a little crazy.  When you have fun, learning can really settle in without being a burden.
  • Make a game out of cutting up food into the right bite-sized pieces, use a ruler or other marking system on plates to figure it out
  • How about chewing so many times before swallowing – 5 chews, 10 chews, set different numbers and get feedback to find the ideal number as a family
  • Or, use a timer for keeping track of chewing with the mouth closed for a certain amount of time. Little kids love setting timers so let them set away for each other!  Keep score.
  • You could be brave and have kids purposely try to talk with food in their mouths while they try to hide the food from being seen by others.  See how much food that is, keep track of the sizes that each kid can successfully hide and talk or say some silly nursery rhyme.   
  • You could also do the opposite of trying to hide the food by having everyone stuff a bit too much food in their mouths and try to talk, maybe you’d want to do this at a picnic table in your backyard since it might get messy.  You also want to make sure no one chokes on it by overdoing it so please be careful if you decide to go this route. 
  • I think you get the idea of chewing games so let’s move on. 
    
    
• You can use USE BOOKS: There are actually books to read for younger kids that can help!  Two favorites for toddlers and preschoolers seem to be “How Dinosaurs Eat Their Food” and “Dinner with Olivia”. 
  
  
• Now, my favorite, SET UP SIGNALS: Those of you who follow my podcasts have heard of other examples of setting up signals in your home for things like anger issues.  I love them!  In this case, once you have the basics down decide with your family what signal you all could use when someone is chewing with their mouth open.  It’s wearing on us all to keep saying things verbally like: “Ann, please chew with your mouth closed.” We start out patient and loving but sometimes it pushes us over the edge and we get triggered and wind up with something like: “If you don’t stop chewing with your mouth open, you’re going to your room!”.  So, what signal could you use?  Here are some ideas but keep in mind that choosing as a family is going to be most effective so use these just as idea starters.  
  • You could tap your fork on your plate gently once for child #1, twice for child #2, etc. 
  • Or maybe you tap your hand on the top of your head or tap your nose.  
  • You could also just do something simple like putting your hand over your mouth.
  • Have a small stuffed animal sitting at the table that gets passed to the person needing reminding.
     
• Whatever you do, CONSISTENCY is super key: Once you’ve communicated and agreed as a family what eating habits are acceptable it’s really important that you follow through.  This will take time and it will be repetitive but you need to keep it loving and kind in addition to being consistent.  Do not give up!
  
  
• Now, for the harder part, having CONSEQUENCES: What do you do if things just aren’t working out for one of your kids?  Maybe you have an older child and they’re just being defiant or spiteful.  Whether your child is young or old you need to agree that there will be consequences for poor eating behaviors.  Possible options include removing the child from the dinner table, making them eat alone or taking away a fun toy or activity.  Listen to my podcast #10 if you need help setting up effective and loving consequences.  You might also listen to my last podcast #51 about dealing with kids who drain your energy if the issue persists.
  
  
• Lastly, there could be MEDICAL ISSUES involved:  I don’t want to leave this topic without covering one more thing about chewing and open mouths.  Some kids have real breathing issues that make it difficult to chew.  They could have overgrown adenoids or tonsils, inflammation of the epiglottis or a throat infection that interfere with chewing.  Toddlers and preschoolers probably fall into this more than older kids but have your pediatrician take a look.
  ​

I hope you found this discussion useful and hopefully you can see how a lot of these can be applied to any table manners you’re struggling with – using utensils, leaning back on chairs, reaching too far across the table and spilling things, not clearing the table, whatever.  You need to establish some family guidelines and then follow through in a loving manner. 

AUDIO PODCAST HERE:    Podcast 51

​In my last podcast I had a wonderful time talking to my two sons but one of my dear friends said she wondered about the “Energy Drains” we talked about.  It sounded like it was effective in getting my sons’ attention and got them to consider how their behavior might impact their lives but I didn’t really explain the full concept.  All parents find themselves in situations where our kids do stuff that really takes energy out of us, yet we don’t know how to respond.  This episode is dedicated to figuring that out so we don’t get caught off guard and can effectively get our energy back in loving ways.

First off, I’ve been a facilitator of Love and Logic® parenting classes for over 10 years now.  It’s such a wealth of great parenting advice presented in really logical ways that are, for the most part, easy to understand.  Things like choices, setting boundaries and allowing for natural consequences are part of just about every solid parenting curriculum no matter what.  There is one term that Love and Logic® coined that has been the hardest to get parents to understand what it means and how they can have it work lovingly in their homes.  It’s Energy Drain.
 
The basic premise is that when kids do things that drain energy out of us, we don’t have any energy left to help them with other things in life.  As a result, they need to put energy back.  Let’s break it down into four parts:
1.What might drain our energy
2.How do you let your kids know they’ve drained you
3.How might kids replenish the energy we lost
4.What do you do when kids choose not to replace your energy
 
So, let’s go!
 
1 - What might drain our energy
This list is pretty easy to come up with for most parents but here are some things that come to mind:

• Whining
• Disrespect and talking back
• Not doing chores
• Not doing homework
• Forgetting stuff at home and causing parents to go get things – homework, sports equipment, musical instruments, lunch boxes, water bottles
• Sibling fighting
• Screen time limits being ignored
• Tantrums

 
I think you get the idea.  Most of these issues have no natural consequences that can put a stop to poor behavior.  When a kid whines or talks back, we’re stumped and often times react to the negative behavior in a negative manner with yelling or punishing.  We usually come up with “Go to your room!” Or: “You’ve just lost your screen time with that attitude!”.  Right?  Doesn’t that sound familiar? 
 
However, sometimes we helicopter a natural consequence like bringing a lunchbox or homework to school when our kids forget instead of allowing them to deal with missing that item themselves.  When we rescue like that, we rob them of learning opportunities but, here’s the key for this episode, we rob ourselves of our time and energy that we don’t get back.  We give and they take.  Not a good formula for the long term. I now have to take MY time to correct a mistake that was not mine.  Not fair one bit.  However, lots of parents just take it in the gut, suck it up and run to school.  It all becomes very draining and possibly infuriating when it happens over and over.
 
Let’s move on. 
 
2 - How do you let your kids know they’ve drained you
 
When your energy is drained you have choices, don’t we love choices?   You can be dramatic or matter of fact, it’ll depend on you and your kids.  For kids 8 and under I think dramatic can work really well.  “Wow, all those toys all over the floor really drain my energy.  Oh man, I’ve got to just sit on the couch and recover… Ugh… I don’t even think I can get up for a long time… Soooo sorry.”  You can have drama but make sure you have empathy too!  This isn’t a punishment, and you need to be really careful it doesn’t morph into that, and empathy will really help.
 
“Gee, this is sooo sad.  I had to do all the dishes you said you’d do and now I’m really drained.”  You might also use: “This is so sad.  It took so long to brush your teeth and get ready for bed that I’m too drained to read you a book.  I hope I can get some energy back tomorrow so we can read stories again.”  Yes, this might result in a meltdown or tantrum, but you need to hang tight to get the result you want. Tomorrow night will go more smoothly as will the night after that.  Every time you give in it sends a signal that your words don’t mean anything.  It basically keeps allowing your child to have a free pass to manipulate you.
 
For teens and tweens, you might be much more casual and make a statement like: “Gosh, you’re talking back really drained my energy today.”  No drama needed and we need to be careful not to get upset when they roll their eyes or give snarky comments when you say this.  Just let that roll off for now.  I do want to recommend you have a Family Meeting with your family, especially with older kids, so that they understand what happens when mom and dad have energy drains.
 
We’re getting more clear on what drains our energy and how use empathy and possibly drama to let your kids know about it,  so let’s move on again. 
 
3 - How might kids replenish the energy we lost
We need to make sure both your child and you are even emotionally.  This is only going to work if everyone is calm.  If your child is crying or yelling back or resentful, you’ll just have to wait.  If you’re upset that they just called you awful names, you need to wait until you have a clear head. 
 
Once that happens then you’ll say something like: “You know how I did the dishes for you earlier.  That really drained my energy.  How do you think you’re going to put energy back in mommy?”  Or: “You know how you and your brother were fighting so much yesterday, that really drained my energy.  What would you like to do to put energy back in mommy?”
 
You might also wait until after school and say in a loving and empathetic voice: “Wow, so glad I was able to run your homework to school today.  That was pretty important, I could tell but, gosh, it really drained my energy.  I was in the middle of writing my lecture and it took an hour out of my day to find your homework, drive to and from school and get restarted.  I’m wondering how you’ll be putting energy back in mommy today.  Would you like some ideas or would you like to choose something from the Energy Drain list on the fridge?”

Believe it or not, most kids actually pick up on this concept really quickly especially when a parent had a solid relationship with their child and uses this in a loving manner and doesn’t turn it into a punishment. 

A good friend who’d been using Energy Drains on his two little boys had been forgetting the empathy part and so they sounded like punishments. “Nick, you hit your brother.  That really drained my energy so go pick something off the list on the fridge.”   That sounds so different than “Wow, Nick, that’s so sad you decided to hit your brother.  It really drains my energy.  We use our words in this house when we have conflicts.  What would you like to do to put energy back in daddy?”

I have a handy list nearby on my fridge or in my head of things they can do to replace the energy drained by their poor decisions. It might be making dinner or sweeping the floor.  It could be dusting or putting lotion on my hands.  It is something your child does for you that they don’t normally do, possibly one of your regular jobs and it should be age appropriate.  If you talk about this whole concept as a family and have them help put together an energy replacement list, they’ll even buy into the program faster.

The whole idea of getting them to replace your energy is to get their brains to recognize the impact their behavior has on other people.  When we let them get away with bad behavior sometimes it’s just because they have no idea how they impact others.  It creates entitlement when we put up with it, doesn’t it?  Your kids think it’s fine to fight with each other because they’ve never known anything could happen except you get mad and make kids go to their room or lose screen time.  They know every time what will happen, but it doesn’t motivate them stop fighting and learn other methods of getting along.  If they fight and all the sudden after they’ve cooled down in their room, they have to pull weeds in the backyard or clean the bathroom, they might get the hint that there could be a better way. 
 
It’s our job as parents to have them take a pause.  They might not be happy about any of this but, over time, they will start to see that their behavior does impact others thanks to your loving and empathetic interventions.  If you haven’t heard my boys in Podcast #50 take a listen and hear what they have to say about the long-term impact of Energy Drains.  Here’s a hint: it mattered and it didn’t make them hate me.  Whew!
 
Here's a link to the ENERGY DRAIN IDEAS list on my website to help you with some energy replacement ideas.  Feel free to download the spreadsheet to edit and print your own if you’re so inclined.  My goal is to make energy replacement easy for you, so have at it!
 
Now, on to the last part.
 
4 - What do you do when kids choose not to replace your energy
This is where things get a little harder.  You’ll have to have something happen, a consequence, when they fail to put your energy back.  You need to know what your child’s currency is, what lever you have over things you do for them, that they want you to keep doing.  Here are some ideas:

• I drive kids to school who’ve put my energy back. 
• I read books at bedtime to kids who’ve put my energy back.
• I drive kids to the store to shop who’ve put my energy back.
• I serve dinner to kids who’ve put my energy back.
• I make dinner when I have enough energy to do so.
• I wash clothes for kids who put my energy back.
  
  

Notice, these are said with love and are not punishments.  Your child can choose to put your energy back, it’s not required.  However, you need to hold strong about what you choose to not do for them so that tantrums and whining about your “stupid energy drain stuff” won’t get to you.  You’re going to go brain dead and say: “Yeah, I know… it’s really hard sometimes.  I’m sure you’ll figure it out.  I sure love you.”  That can keep making them mad though so don’t be surprised when they’re in the learning mode of this technique.  Just be patient.  Nod your head or hum: “Uh huh…” or “Wow…”
​
I’m going to offer one other solution for getting energy drain replacements going when it comes to kids not doing chores.  This one worked great for my own boys in their middle and high school years.  I never yelled or nagged about doing chores, I know, it’s hard to imagine.  I let it be known that I’d be happy to do any chore for them and I posted a list of charges on my kitchen bulletin board.  They each had weekly and daily chores, not an overwhelming number but a few.  It was only $20 for me to take the garbage bins to the street, $5 to refill TP and $10 to comb the cat. Everything had a price and I used prices that would get their attention.  I collected my charges once a month from the pink note cards that went on the bulletin board to track when I did a job for them.  It allowed me to be a happy mom and they got to be responsible since they didn’t like giving me their money.  I was also willing to bargain with them if they did one of my jobs so they didn’t have to pay me.  I was flexible! 
 
If you talk to your family in a Family Meeting about what drains your energy, they can be prepared to help balance the scales in your home away from the take-take-take that happens way too often.  I’ve seen parents with kids as young as two make energy drains work and as old as high school.  It helps build respect for others which is a necessary life skill we all need to become thoughtful, successful adults. 

In this blog I’m going to continue our quest to teach manners to our children.  We’ve already covered “please” in Podcast 47 and explored how to encourage acts of kindness in Podcast 48.  Now it’s time to figure out how to get our kids to say “thank you” and how to help develop a general sense of appreciation for not only “things” but also training them in thankfulness help to promote an “attitude of gratitude”.

THANK YOU
As I said previously, getting our kids to use “Thank You” is tougher than “please”.  Why is that?  Because it happens AFTER something, not before like “please”.  It’s easy for a kid to just forget and hard for us to not feel like we’re nagging to get them to do the thanking we expect them to do.  It means we have to work a bit harder to get the response we want.
 
Let’s start with some ideas for you to ponder.
 
First, Start Early:
Even a baby can be taught to say thank you using sign language which I total admire folks who are able to start that young.  However, most of you listening probably have older kids so just start your “thank you” training as soon as you can.  What this really involves is training yourself, something that can be difficult for some of us, but every time you give something to one of your kids, stop and wait for a thank you.  Don’t do anything else until you get a thank you.  No nagging, just wait. 

You can gently and empathetically prompt them with one of these phrases if it’s not obvious to your child what you’re waiting for.  Something like:

• And what do you say?
• In our house we say what when someone does something for us?
• I’d love to hear that “thank you” in your sweet voice.  It really fills me up when I’ve done something for you. 

Notice the tone of my voice.  It’s gentle. It’s loving.  Practice that tone.

When you hear your kids getting help from someone else instead of yourself, feel free to gently use similar phrases.

• And what do we say to a friend who helps us? 
• And what do we say when brother helps you?

I think you get the idea.
 
Next, Be Consistent:
When we want to set up a new skill, we have to remember to use it A LOT!  Feel free to have a Family Meeting and talk about thanks – why we use it and how it makes us feel when it is used.  Let your kids know you’ll be making an effort to help the family use “thanks” every day and in every way.  They might get tired of hearing you gently remind them but you need to respond to their gripes with kindness and empathy.  “Oh, I know, it does take extra time to thank people but, in our family, we are thankful every day.  Do you need a minute to gather your thoughts?”
Notice again my tone. 

Lastly, Give Praise for Thankfulness:
A simple response from us as parents can help reinforce positive behavior.  Here’s an idea, after a child uses “thank you” say:

• I loved how you said “thanks”.  It warms my heart. 
• I really appreciate that. 

I know, it almost sounds like you’re thanking your child for thanking you but, hey, we need to be positive and, for me at least, it does warm my heart. 
 
FAMILY THANKING EVENTS
In all of our families there are times when we should be thankful.  Here are some ideas that come to mind that hopefully you can weave into your family’s DNA:

Dinner Thank Yous: At each dinner as a family have everyone say three thankfuls.  Why three?  I think our kids often just say something quick to get rid of the “task” at the dinner table so have categories of thanks for them to use.  They can even help pick the categories to make it more appealing.  One idea might be: something inside the house, something outside the house and something inside our hearts.  Or, something at home, at school and at a friend’s house.  Maybe: someone in your family, a friend nearby and a relative.  
Come up with a creative list and try it out.  Change it up over time!  Change it with the season.  Whatever you can to keep thankfulness examples alive in your home. 
Bedtime Blessings

If your family is a bit crazy at dinner time, nighttime might be a good alternative for setting up a routine of thankfulness.  It is usually a sweet time of day to pause and ask for thankfuls as the kids are cuddling into bed, maybe after books.  You can use the same category idea if you want or keep it simple.  Again, being consistent will help.
 
Thank You Notes for Gifts: Writing thank yous for gifts our children receive is excellent training for practicing thankfulness. 

When my boys were young, even 3 or 4, I would have them write or draw thank yous for both birthday and Christmas presents.  I participated a lot when they were that young but as they got older, we moved on to where they not only wrote the cards but they got out the supplies and wrote the envelopes and put stamps on and put them in the mailbox.  Now a days that might be all old fashioned so if you’re family and friends accept email thank yous, that’s fine, but the really important part is setting up the practice a routine of: “I get gifts. I am thankful. I thank the people who were so thoughtful to think of me.” 

Do something and do it EVERY time.  One parent I know used to only let their child open a present if they’d already addressed the Thank You to the relative or friend.  Some other families write a list of gifts on a notepad as they are opened so there’s an easy way to know what came from whom after all the unwrapping is over. They use that list to make their cards. 

Making Manners Fun
Now that we’ve got some ideas of the basics, let’s see what else we can add that might help us have fun with being thankful in our homes.

FANCY DINNER
One idea is really cool and I’d love to hear from you if you try it!  I’d even be up for being invited to a dinner with your family if you’re in the Bay Area in California. Here’s the idea: have your family can stage a “fancy dinner” night where all good manners are overtly discussed and practiced.  Get out the candles and the fancy table cloth (assuming it’s easily washable) and try it.  Show them how they ask politely for food using “please” and to say “thank you” when someone passes them something.  Give LOTS of praise too! 

It’s so fun to go overboard and even have them pull out their chairs quietly and clear the table with a smile before being served some fancy dessert.  Make it fun!  Dress up in fancy clothes or have a color theme.  It’s great to include a round of “What am I thankful for” at the same time.  Maybe you can sneak in some lessons in how to use utensils politely or where the utensils are supposed to go around their plate.  Make it feel like a 5-star event!  Bottomline, have a bunch of fun exaggerating.  Kids usually love that.
 
FAMILY MEETINGS
Moving on, if the Fancy Dinner idea wouldn’t work for your family for thankfulness training at mealtimes, maybe you have uncooperative teens who think you are totally weird, you should have a Family Meeting, you know how I love those, to talk about other ways in which you can improve on manners either at the table or anywhere else in life. 
 
MODELING
Bottomline, it starts with you!  Make sure you’re modeling thoughtful, kind manners yourself.  Our kids are little imitators who grow up into big imitators so being on the right page yourself will help. 
 

AUDIO PODCAST HERE:  Episode 47

A few months ago, I asked my FB group what areas they needed help with in the manners department.  I was thinking of the “please” and “thank you” kind of manners, you know the ones that included sending thank yous to people who gave you gifts.  However, I got a whole list of ones that weren’t even in my brain any more now that my boys are grown and out of the house.  The parents sent in all sorts of requests:

• How to handle interruptions (this was the most requested one!)
• How to get kids to say please and thank you for meals
• Using “excuse me” when interrupting
• Dealing with table manners including the “eating with your mouth open” offense

Yikes!  I thought this would be a breeze of a podcast.  Well, it’s clearly a larger topic than I’d anticipated so I’ve decided to do a series of podcasts on manners so that I can delve deep and you can pick and choose the areas that you need most help on so here goes!
 
The basics of manners is about teaching kindness and thoughtfulness of others, to allow our kids to see outside their often times very selfish world.  Our mission as parents is to grow our children into people who are thoughtful, respectful and conscientious and manners are part of our responsibility in getting them there.   This first lesson is about how to instill one of those foundational magic words into your kids – “please”.
 
PLEASE
How do you incorporate “please” into your family?  Here are my ideas:

• Start young: I would very start young.  There’s baby sign language for please.  If you have a small baby, use it!  You can do a google search and find lots of resources for it. 
• With Older Kids Set Family Rule: A lot of you know that I think communication is really helpful and I love Family Meetings for doing that.  If you have been struggling with “please” and other manners, hold a Family Meeting.  It should be short and sweet.  I wouldn’t lecture but I’d make a short statement about how in our home we treat each other with respect and using “please” and “thank you” are pillars of respect.  Let them know how you’re going to start by encouraging the use of “please” in a consistent manner. Ask your kids what they think, listen to their feedback and you can schedule more meetings as you move through different manners. 
• Practice! What does the dialog sound like? Well, in my home my routine was, when asked without a “please”, I would nicely say “And how do you say that nicely?”  Then, if the child just said: “Please.” I would then say: “How do you say that in a full sentence?” I not only required this of my own boys but also their friends who were over constantly.  I was even handed, not forcing just my own boys but the boys they were playing with to treat me with respect. 
  • Using a full sentence request
    • Mrs. Eschen, can I have some gold fish?
    • Sure, and how do you say that nicely?
    • Please
    • Nice try, how do you say that in a full sentence?
    • Please can I have some gold fish?
    • Of course, here they are. 
  • “Excuse me?” One mom when asked for something without manners set up a signal for her kids and that was: “Excuse me?”
    • Mom, I need to go to the store to get poster paper for tomorrow! 
    • Her reply was:  Excuse me?
    • Mom, may we please go to the store to get poster paper for my project for tomorrow?
• Upgrade for Older Kids: As your child gets older you can incorporate “may I please” into your phrasing to upgrade their speech into a more formal and respectful tone. So, in our example it would be “May I please have some goldfish?” or “Please may I have some goldfish?”.  You get the idea. It’s subtle but certainly an upgrade.  Have a Family Meeting to talk about the need for an upgrade.  Keep explaining that this is a Life Skill you are teaching, not a method of getting them to submit to our will for no apparent reason.  People want to be with people who treat them with respect, that’s why we’re upgrading.  It’s practice for life!
• Role Play: I gave you some examples already but I think that the use of role playing can be incorporated to hone your family’s skills while having some fun.  Learning should be fun so put on your thinking caps and even incorporate your kids into the brainstorming of how to do that if you can.  One idea might be to set up a special dinner with special plates and lots of different dishes on the table that have to be passed around.  Then practice while you eat!  “John, may I please have the rice.” “Andrea, please pass the mac and cheese.” Over exaggerate the whole meal!   Maybe you have a special “Please” Meal once a week for a while?  Maybe you have a “Please” Breakfast on the weekend?  Or a “Please” Game night where you have to ask for the dice nicely each time.  Come up with a few ideas and try them out. 
• Consistency is Key: What can make all this work? Consistency!  Yep, I said it took 10 years and I’m not kidding.  I was loving and kind.  I didn’t nag.  I didn’t lecture.  I just waited for the correct response and then, and only then, did they receive what they were asking for. 
• Model What You Want to See: Modeling the behavior you want to see is hugely beneficial to your quest for any behavior but especially in the area of respect and manners.  You being kind and using “please” will complete the loop.  Your kids notice what you do.  They are little sponges.  They will know if you are sincere and true to this quest for good manners.  Be it.  Live it.  Because, if you don’t, by the time your kids are tweens or teens you’d be amazed at how they seem to join the Hypocrite Police and will start throwing your poor manners right back at you.
• Leverage The Please: Keep in mind that you have leverage with “please” since it happens BEFORE something your kids want.  If your kids want something it means you have currency to trade.  If it’s help with math or washing their favorite pair of jeans or playing a game, you know their brain is in an open mindset to listen since they want something from you.  Seize the day!  Ask for the please and you’ll get it. 
• Other Ways to Give Kids Feedback: I just wanted to throw out a few other ideas for how to request the “please” in your home, just for variety.  Remember to always use a loving and gentle tone:
  • You’re missing the magic word
  • What’s that magic word again?
  • I can’t hear you when you ask like that.
  • Lastly, if they ask rudely for something give them a choice, you know how I love choices too, they can ask nicely or encourage them to solve their own problem if they don’t want to.  For example, if they say “I need some milk!”, your reply might sound like: “You can ask for it politely or try to get it on your own.”  Just make sure if they are sassy back at you and say things like “You never help me!” that you just give them love and not start an argument about their poor attitude.  A simple reply of: “Hmm… that’s sad.  Any what did I say?”  Then go listen to podcast #41 on Disrespect to remember what to do about that sassiness. 

 

AUDIO PODCAST HERE:  Episode 43

What do you do when you have two or more children who just don’t get along?  I mean they really can’t stand each other.  They’ll even say to each other that they hate each other?  I’ve had many parents over the years ask me how they can help their children love each other or at the very least tolerate each other.
 
Well, it’s a tough question. 

I just want to make two observations about siblings who don’t get along:
 
First, IT’S NORMAL AND DRAINING on the whole family
Siblings not getting along is very normal and I mean VERY normal.  There’s no one in the world who can get in your face more than a sibling can.  Whether it’s a younger brother getting into an older brother’s prized Yu-Gi-Oh card collection or an older sister’s jealousy of a younger sister’s popularity at school; they are enough to just really get under a kid’s skin.  It creates plenty of whining, screaming and crying for moms and dads to deal with.  It can lead to kids declaring that they hate each other and will sabotage every family experience as a result.

• Mooom!  She’s in my room!  Get her out of here!  (followed by lots of yelling and door slamming, maybe a punch or a kick)
• Daaaad! Danny is so stupid!  I hate it when he plays games with us! He’s so dumb!
• Mooom! He ate my goodie bag candy!  He’s so fat he shouldn’t be allowed to live!
• In my house growing up we’d get mad at a sibling for breathing air
• And it goes on and on….

Their angst drags us and our whole family down the drain, the energy drain!  You can’t take a hike or a drive in the car without a fight erupting.  You for sure can’t have a family meal in peace. 
 
Next observation, Sibling issues are FULL OF LIFE LESSONS
As adults, in our lifetimes we’ve run into people we don’t like and we’ve had to learn how to get along with them. In your child’s future is an annoying coworker or a demanding and demeaning boss.  Our kids need to have opportunities to learn and refine their people skills and siblings are perfect practice targets.  They keep coming at you over and over until you get it right.  They don’t just go away so there’s a ton of opportunity to practice how to get along! The trick as parents is how to get them to learn these precious life lessons. 
 
That leads me to our next phase – possible solutions!  I have three ideas for you to try in your home. 
 
IDEA #1:  Set BOUNDARIES using Family Meetings
I grew up in a Christian household and was always reminded of the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have done unto you.  How did I know this rule?  My parents taught it to me.  My parents enforced it.  It’s a pretty good rule and really boils down to how parents need to set boundaries on behaviors in our households.  If your kids are mistreating each other then it’s time to sit everyone down and set up some Family Respect Rules then tackle some specific areas in the same manner.

FIRST MEETING – Set Family Respect Rules
In the very first meeting you’d facilitate a discussion of what the Family Rules around respect and behavior toward each other should be.  ASK your kids and spouse for input.  It might include things like:

• No one can come in your room without permission
• You must treat each other with respect
• If you can’t talk in a civil tone you cannot talk for 15 minutes
• No one can touch your toys without permission
• If someone isn’t home you still can’t touch their toys without permission
• No calling each other names

 
You also have to have consequences to go with the new rules.  Ask for input on that too.  I love choices so I’d try to make sure the kids have choices to choose from.  It might look something like… IF ANYONE BREAKS A FAMILY RESPECT RULE, they can choose one of the following:

• Offenders will play the “Love Game”, this is where offending children have to sit and hold hands.  Then they say five positive things about each other.  Lastly, they hug and forgive each other. 
• Offenders will play together for 15 minutes, really play not just watch a movie
• Offenders can do an extra job on Mom’s Job List (you can use my Energy Drain List if you need ideas!)

 
If you have kids who refuse to sit down for a Family Meeting then you need to set up a consequence for their non-participation.  The old: “I allow kids to … go to the movies who’ve participated in our Family Meeting” will come into play.  If you need more ideas about setting consequences listen to episode 10.
 
 
SECOND MEETING – Tackle Specific Areas of Tension
Once you set up the basic Respect Rules you can move on to the next phase of Family Meetings.  Pick one situation where your kids really drive each other crazy and try to clean that up.  Take, for instance, driving in the car.  Have a family meeting about "How to Have a Peaceful Drive in the Car".  You ask for suggestions about what could make the drive calm keeping in mind the new Family Respect Rules.  Take any and all suggestions! 
 
Some might wind up being:
· have brother put a sock in his mouth
· sister puts on headphones and listens to music while we drive
· brother plays the license plate game with mom as they drive
· everyone eats popcorn
· sister wears a bag over her head
· brother sits in the middle row and sister sits in the very back of the car (this assumes you have a car that has 3 rows). Sister might be sitting shotgun right now since she's pretty old but maybe moving her to another location can help. 
· brother brings books to read in the car and wears headphones to do a read-along with a book
· drive kids separately to school and charge each kid for the driving time ($2 per mile?)
· no talking while we drive, sister picks the music to play in the car one day, brother picks the next day, any complaining and the opposite child gets two days in a row to pick music.
 
I think you get the idea, make a long list.  Have weird things on the list like the bag over the head.
 
Next, pick a few to TRY for a week.  Yep, just TRY.  Don't make anything permanent.  Keep the full list around.
 
Next, schedule the NEXT Family Meeting.  At that meeting go over if things worked or didn't work.  What would they like to keep doing and what would they like to experiment with next week?  Change things up, try new things then HAVE ANOTHER MEETING and keep having them each week until this one problem is sufficiently solved.  That you can drive in the car peacefully.  THEN move on to another area where there is disharmony and do the same with it.  Maybe that next area is dinner time?  Or maybe getting ready for bed?  
 
Whatever issues are happening it's best to use a format where everyone can communicate and feel they have input to the solution.  It helps get buy-in for having the solution work when people feel heard. Listen to Episode 17 if you want some more examples of Family Meetings.
 
IDEA #2 - Special Time/Connection Time
Each child needs to feel listened to.  They need to know they are loved unconditionally.  Sometimes sibling strife comes about when they have issues that aren’t being paid attention to.  You need to divide and conquer and make sure YOUR connection to each child is solid. 
 
Create some special time for each of your kids who aren’t getting along to be with just one parent at a time.  Do something each child likes to do even if it's not your favorite thing.  For a teen or tween maybe going for boba tea or Starbucks. For a younger child it might be building Legos or playing Barbies.  Just BE with them.  Let them relax so you can chat and connect.  NO LECTURES!  If you need longer connecting time maybe you go paint pottery together or take a hike.  Maybe drive to San Francisco to some special event or store?  For me, I took my son out for lunch at a casual sit-down place and we played cards.  It kept us off our phones and let us just casually chat. 
 
Once you feel you have a solid connection then you can set an intention of a topic that you want to talk about and get feedback on sibling issues.  If your relationship is rocky, however, your discussions will always be difficult and you’ll probably be rebuffed so keep your main focus on building that solid relationship foundation.
 
IDEA #3 - Love Languages
In podcast Episode #33 I interviewed two experts on Love Languages.  God made us all different and we all feel loved and valued in different ways but we often go through life having no idea of how the people in our families best feel loved which can lead to a lot of sibling fighting.  I can’t recommend enough having each person in your family go through the simple quiz to find out how they feel loved.  It can be very powerful in helping kids get along.  A daughter might learn that her brother needs to feel love from her in special ways so that he can calm down and be relaxed.  Little brother can also learn why big sister likes to have feedback differently than he likes it.  In the episode the two women do a really nice job of explaining how it helped their families.  
 
When I write a podcast or blog, I always surf the internet for additional resources.  This time I found a really helpful one from Pint-Sized Treasures.  Allison Wood is an amazing mom of 6 who explains some more of these ideas including the Love Game I mentioned earlier in her article “What to Do When Your Kids Hate Each Other”.  I’m going to put a link to her article in the podcast notes in addition to a link to my Sibling Rivalry podcast episode #9 in case you haven’t had a chance to listen to that.
 
One last thought, sibling relationships that go sour in adulthood often have their roots in childhood.  Make sure you’re not pitting your kids against each other for your love and attention and favoring one child more than another.  I grew up in a house with 12 kids who were close together in age.  Yep, 12.   It is overwhelming to think of the battles that we fought with each other during our years growing up.  Our parents were pretty even handed though.  One of my older sisters who picked on me constantly helped me to be quick-witted and be able to stand up to people who might verbally try to push me in directions I didn’t want to go.  She toughened me up!  I hated her at the time for it since she was so mean but once we moved into adulthood, we gradually became very good friends.  There is hope for your children who aren’t getting along but you need to steer the ship in the right direction.  I hope some of these ideas might work for you.  Write me and let me know! [email protected].

PODCAST LINK HERE

In a previous episode, #20, I talked about how setting boundaries and loving limits can help your family run more smoothly.  You communicate the boundaries up front in a loving way and you allow for consequences to happen when the boundaries are exceeded. It sounds so easy when I say that right?  Easier said than done.
 
A few days ago, I ran into a family who’d been to my classes and lectures and have been trying to implement good boundaries over the classic issue in all our homes – screen time!

They set up clear boundaries, 30 minutes a day for their 5th grade boy.  Their son knew the rule but the parents told me that just about every day as soon as he was done with his 30 minutes he immediately started asking for more time.  And he kept asking and asking and asking.  Dad felt their boundary worked about 75% of the time, meaning their son got no extra screen time,  but 25% of the time their son got more time.  Hmm… Mom and dad were not in agreement that the 75% was a good success rate – dad thought it was pretty good but mom thought they could do better.  However, both of them were in agreement about one thing -- that their son begging was really getting to them. 

Our kids are smart.  When we give in 25% of the time, we give them permission to ignore our boundaries which can easily lead to begging.  It works for our kid 25% of the time which is way better than 0% so why not try it?  That’s what goes on in our kids brains without them even having to think about it. 
 
What’s a parent to do?  How do you get beyond the begging for more when you have been quite clear about the limits?
 
There are two things I’d recommend.

1. Use a simple phrase:  AND WHAT DID I SAY? 
   When they ask for more screen time, it would sound like: AND WHAT IS THE LIMIT?   Have them repeat the limit back to you then say nothing or, at the most, give them empathy that limits are hard.  Give them real empathy, “I’m sorry this is so hard on you.”
   
   
2. Have consequences for complaining and whining about not liking whatever limit they don’t like.  Love and Logic recommends using ENERGY DRAIN when things like this happen that don’t have natural consequences.  It sounds like: “Wow, this is so sad, it really drains my energy when I keep getting asked for more screen time when you know you’ve already had your time for the day.  How would you like to put energy back in mom?”  Notice my calm voice with empathy.  I’m sad that they’ve crossed the line and need to put energy back. 
   
   Feel free to even be dramatic when they start asking for more screen time!  “Oh my!!!  My head… it’s awful… my whole body is draining of energy!  Ugh!  Being asked for more screen time is just the worst!  What are you going to do to help get my energy back?  I’ll go sit here on the couch to recover while you figure it out.”     
   
   I have a handy list nearby on my fridge or in my head of things they can do to replace the energy drained by their pestering me. It might be making dinner or sweeping the floor.  It could be dusting or putting lotion on my hands.  It is something your child does for you that they don’t normally do, possibly one of your regular jobs.  The idea is to get their brains off thinking about their selfish requests onto the impact their behavior has on other people.  This is true for all ages of kids!  2-year old’s might be dusting or vacuuming while 16-year old’s might be making dinner. 
   
   Here's a link to my Energy Drain Idea list.
   
   But what do you do if they won’t put your energy back?  This is where things get a little harder.  You’ll have to have something happen, a consequence, when they fail to put your energy back.  You need to know what your child’s currency is, what lever you have over things you do for them that they want you to keep doing.  Here are some ideas:

• I drive kids to school who’ve put my energy back. 
• I read books at bedtime to kids who’ve put my energy back.
• I drive kids to the store to shop who’ve put my energy back.
• I serve dinner to kids who’ve put my energy back.

If you’re able to ask for the replacement in a loving and consistent manner your kids should view you as fair and reliable even if they don’t always agree with the rules.  No yelling.  No long lectures, just empathy.  “This is so sad that you’re having trouble with boundaries.”  You do have to be prepared for a tantrum or two when you’ve had to use a lever to get them to put your energy back but, stay strong.  You can do it!
 
Why Boundaries Fail:
I just want to take a minute to go over a few more reasons why some of your boundaries might not be working in your home. 

1. Boundaries are Undefined – this is where you think they should know them but you never actually said it out loud
2. Boundaries are Too Flexible – this is what happened to my family with the screen time issue, the kids don’t know when mom and dad might enforce a limit but there are limits
3. Boundaries have Too Much Negativity – when boundaries are always negative it makes kids want to rebel, there is a lot of “you can’t” do this or that
4. Boundaries have no Consequences – you set a limit and then don’t do anything when the limit is broken
5. Too Many Boundaries – this is when parents are trying to control way too many aspects of kids’ lives and the kids have no room to breathe, they are always breaking rules every 10 minutes since there are so many rules

 
How to Set Good Boundaries:
Now let’s do a quick review of how to set good boundaries:

1. Define the Boundaries – I love to recommend families have Family Meetings to help define and set limits so no one is surprised and everyone has some input into the rules when it’s possible.
2. Make it positive! You want to tell your kids what they CAN do, not what they CAN’T do. 
3. Have Consequences - Kids need to know what will happen if they choose to disobey you or ignore you.
4. Be Consistent – we talked about that already
5. Be Reasonable - it’s great to make a list of Family Rules but be careful not create so many rules that the kids feel they don’t have choices and will start to rebel.  It’s best if you can incorporate ways for your kids to have a feedback loop especially when setting up new rules as your kids grow. 

1. Be Calm and Loving – when our kids give us grief feel free to go braindead.  “Mom, this sucks that I can’t use screens when all my friends do all the time!”  Your response is: “I knooooooooowwww” in a boring, but loving tone.  You can always talk with your child at later time to ask for feedback if you get too much grief but not in the moment when their emotions are activated. 

 
I hope this was helpful. 

Here's a link to my other episode and the Energy Drain Idea List:
Episode 20 - Creating Calm with Boundaries and Limits
ENERGY DRAIN IDEAS

PODCAST LINK HERE

What do you when your child disrespects you?  You know, when they roll their eyes or huff something under their breath?  Does it get right under your skin?  Make you just want to jump down your kid’s throat and make them take it back?  They don’t appreciate anything you do so you might as well take away their electronics or send them to bed early to make them pay for such disrespect, right?  You’re just not going to put up with such behavior! 
 
Does that sound like you?  Ugh… it’s a tough place for a parent to be in.  Hopefully this podcast will help.
 
I want to dive into disrespect with you.  What it is and how to get it under control with the hopes of getting into our child’s heart to make a difference in the long run. 
 
The truth is, disrespectful behavior is one of the inappropriate ways kids, especially teenagers but not limited to teens, try to solve their problems. Kids can feel powerless in the face of rules and expectations and talking back and showing disrespect is one way they try to take some power back. If they can drag you into an argument, that’s even better: Now you’re arguing about respect instead of focusing on their curfew or their homework or cleaning up their toys!

As parents, we definitely need to teach our children how to treat others with kindness, and how to communicate big feelings without being disrespectful.

Unfortunately, we cannot teach them to be respectful in the heat of the moment.
If you ask your kids about why they’re being disrespectful, they usually say that it’s because they are angry. Someone, and it’s usually you, hurt them. So, out of instinct, they want to hurt you back.

What can we do then?  Here are some ideas to help deal with disrespect in a thoughtful and respectful manner. 

1. Avoid the Fight in the Moment
When genuinely being disrespected, we should pay attention to the circumstance instead of yelling at the child, “You are being disrespectful!”

You as a parent are upset. You are called names and they hurt.

To teach respect, first, we need to stay calm and stay in control. Identify if this is a real “disrespect” situation, a misunderstanding, tantrum, or simply because the child hasn’t learned the proper response in such a situation.

You may see these words as signs your child doesn’t respect you. But what is the child’s intention when they say those mean words?

It is usually not malicious because kids (and grownups) cannot think straight when they are angry, they’re in fight-or-flight mode. They just reflexively want to fight back to protect themselves and, in this case, they use hurtful words to do so.

I know you WANT to deal with it right then and there.

But, once your child is angry, disappointed, frustrated, or upset, the thinking part of their brain has shut down. They are in survival mode. Their body is flooded with emotions and they are not able to hear and process the lessons you might want to teach.

I also know you HATE being disrespected.

But, if you are triggered by their disrespectful behavior, your brain goes into fight-or-flight mode too. You are not able to think rationally. Your responses will either be filled with anger, yelling and punishment or you will shut down and give up.

We can’t teach our kids to be respectful by treating them with disrespect so you need to slow down and let the emotion pass.  Deal with disrespect when there’s no emotion present.  For some that will be a few hours later, for others it could be a few days.

We’re going to look for a moment when our child is calm and we can sincerely say “Hey, you know the other day you called me a mean mom and said you hated me?  That really hurt my feelings.  I need you to know that I love you and that really bothered me. Can we talk about it?  Maybe think of other ways to tell me how you’re feeling?”  If you’ve waited for the right moment hopefully, you’ll be able to clear the air as to why they were so upset and have a talk about how to communicate better in the future. 

But, let’s go over a few more ideas since staying calm might be hard for some of you.

What else can we do?

2. Use Family Meetings
If you have major respect issues going on in your household, it’s probably a sign that there’s not enough communication about expectations and consequences.  I want you to sit down with your family and brainstorm a plan about how you’re going to be more respectful.  For those of you who listen to my podcast regularly this is what I call a Family Meeting.  In your meeting I want you to model for your family how to use words in positive ways to allow for opinions to be expressed.  This wouldn’t be a meeting where mom and dad lay down the law but one where everyone can give input about what is frustrating them and causing them to be disrespectful.  It’s the triggers that lead to disrespect that we have to eliminate to help create more respect.  What do I mean?  Let’s say my son was supposed to be cleaning his room but was playing on his gaming system instead. This all leads to me taking away his gaming controller and him yelling at me very disrespectfully that I’m so stupid and how I’m ruining his life. 

If I were to use a Family Meeting here it would be about the trigger for the disrespect – not cleaning his room -- along with how he and I need to communicate in the future when chores aren’t being done. We might decide how I would approach him next time when he’s playing a game to get his attention, like tapping him on the shoulder and waiting a specified amount of time for him to pause. After our meeting the next time his chores aren’t done, if our agreed upon method doesn’t work then we’re going to have a follow-up Family Meeting. We need to figure out how to tweak what we’ve laid out, maybe it would be setting which hours he can play or delaying any play until his chores are done.  All of this is going to be an iterative process, but it should lead to the disrespect quotient in your family being significantly lessened. 

If we as a family can train ourselves to look for communication solutions when we have disrespectful bumps in the road that happen, we can have a lot more respect for each other in the long run.  But we have to have those Family Meetings to get some real solutions going and we need to keep having them when new issues arise.  If you want more information about Family Meetings listen to podcast episode #17.

3. Don’t Take Everything Personally or Overreact
Pretty much every teenager pokes relentlessly at their parents, expressing their frustrations in various ways. Again, this isn’t limited to teens, kids of any age can do this.  Eye rolling, scoffing, smirking, little kids might even spit or kick you – those are all tools in their arsenal that convey their disregard. And as we all know; those irritating behaviors can get under our skin. Kids are looking for those weak spots, those places where they can drag us into defending ourselves and our rules.

If we take it personally, it’s going to be hard to respond effectively. If we react to every single one of those behaviors, we’re not likely to see any change in our kids. While these things are annoying, they aren’t something to correct in the moment.

We need to decide which behaviors we’re going to focus on, and which we can ignore using what Love and Logic calls “going braindead”. Remember that those mildly irritating behaviors aren’t about us, they’re simply an expression of frustration by our child. Our role is to deal with our child’s behavior as objectively as possible. It doesn’t mean we won’t be irritated. Let it go and ignore it so we can stay focused on the topic at hand. 

Ignoring is about refusing to let our child's disrespect derail us from the task at hand. If we tell our child to take out the trash and they roll their eyes, don't engage in a lengthy argument over the disrespectful eye rolling. Each minute we spend in a power struggle is 60 seconds they'll put off taking out the trash.
 
If eye-rolling is a common problem, we should address the issue at a later time when both of us are calm just like I said before. Again, say something like, "Earlier today when I told asked you to take out the trash, you rolled your eyes. Are you aware that you do that when you're mad? It really makes me feel disrespected.  Can we think of something different you can do when you’re feeling frustrated with me?" 

4. Model respect 
If we value respect, model respectful behavior. We need to do our best to show them the way it should be done.  Make sure we’re treating our spouse, our boss, our neighbors, and others with respect.  We don’t have to agree with everyone, but we need to model for our kids that everyone deserves to be respected.  In our current political situation, it’s easy to disrespect someone who has a different opinion.  Model that opinions for different people are different and it’s ok.  
 
5. Don’t Take Our Child’s Side
Wait, what? What does “taking our child’s side” have to do with disrespectful behavior?
Let’s say our child complains about how much homework he has, calling the teacher names and generally being disrespectful toward her. We might agree that this particular teacher does give too much homework.
If we take our child’s side in this case, we might say we agree that we think the teacher is stupid, and that she’s doing a terrible job. The message our child hears is: if we think someone is wrong, then we have a right to be rude.

The truth is, neither of us has to agree with someone to treat them respectfully. Even if we think the teacher (or the coach, or the boss, etc.) is wrong, we need to let our child know that regardless of how they feel, they still need to find a way to act appropriately.

One benefit of this approach is that our children will most likely encounter plenty of people in their adult life they disagree with. Help them learn the skills they need to handle those disagreements calmly and appropriately.

6. Don’t Demand Respect
“I am your parent and you have to respect me!” Does that sound familiar? A lot of parents ask me, “How can I get my child to respect me?” You can’t demand respect, but you can require that your child acts respectfully, no matter how they feel about the situation.

“You don’t have to like the rule, but you do have to comply with it. Just because you’re irritated doesn’t mean you get to call me names.”

Remember, stay focused on the behavior, and leave the feelings alone. The irony is that, in the long run, your child will respect you more if you remain calm and enforce your rules consistently.

7. Respect Their Choices
It is ridiculous how some parents want to have complete control over their child’s behavior and preferences.  If you want your child to respect you, start with respecting their choices.

Everyone has their own preferences. As much as you want your child to be a mini-me and like exactly the same things you do, they are most likely not going to. Your child has their own likings. If you don’t like what they want, you should explain your rationale. But ultimately, they have to learn to make decisions for themselves. As long as their choice is not a danger to safety or health, is not (too) financially consuming and does not hurt others, you need to honor it.

That is why you need to let them make their own choices in things such as what they wear or what homework they do in what order. A child could end up going to school wearing mismatched socks or coloring outside the lines. Every person has the right to think independently and like different things. That should include children.
When children’s differences are accepted, they feel heard and respected. They see first-hand, through your modeling, how to treat others who have different opinions. They learn that they should respect people despite their differences.

When the teenage years come, this understanding and tolerance for differences is how to get your teenager to respect you. That’s when everything Mom and Dad say will sound stupid to them. You want your teenager to know how to tolerate differences and still respect and appreciate you!

8. Use Restitution
If your child or teen behaves in a disrespectful manner, restitution may be necessary to discourage it from happening again. You might have your child help the offended person by doing their chores for the day or some other special service.  Just forcing them to say “I’m sorry” doesn’t really work well in getting to the heart of the offense.  I have a podcast episode #35 on How to Teach Kids to Apologize that has a lot more detail about what to do if you need help in this area.

I know this is a lot to absorb and I really feel for you if you feel disrespected in your home after all the work you put into your family.  I hope things like staying calm, using Family Meetings and the other ideas in this podcast will help you in your journey.  It will take effort to bring things respect into focus but it is possible and you’re the key to unlocking respect in your home. 

PODCAST LINK HERE

Would you like to know how to deal with your child getting a bad teacher? Having a bad teacher can feel like a prison sentence for the whole family. Sadly, there is nothing you can do about it immediately but hope for the best.
What makes it worse is when every other parent in the class starts complaining after the first day of school because they know what it is going to be like for the next nine months. Most of us know that it’s almost impossible to change classes once a class list is set which is part of the reason most schools that I know don’t post their class lists until a day or two before school starts each year.  But what can you do to make the most out of the situation?
 
In this article I want to talk about a few things.  First, what do bad teachers look like?  How do they behave? Next, what can you do about it as a parent and, lastly, what can your child do about making it through the year in once piece having learned what they need to.  That’s a lot to cover so let’s dive in. 
 
First, there seem to be three kinds of bad teachers: Fluffy, Boring and Mean

1. What’s a Fluffy teacher?
   • These are the ones that often show movies or tell personal stories, getting off topic. Often times they are super nice human beings but just don’t manage to teach much or don’t teach the topic at hand. How can you tell if your child has a fluff teacher?  You might begin by asking to see the curriculum and look up the Common Core Standards to find out what your child should be learning. This will send a message that you are informed and watching.  My niece had a second-grade teacher who had been a kindergarten teacher for 20 years and was moved up due to class size issues.  Well, after a while my brother and his wife, who both happened to be teachers, noticed that homework coming home was kindergarten level work.  I kid you not!     
2. What’s a Boring teacher?
   • These teachers just read from the script or are just unchallenging and can be deadly.  One friend was in a class with a high school history teacher in her last year before retiring. That teacher could care less about teaching.  She literally read the textbook.  It was agonizingly boring each and every time my friend went to class.  What a drudge to get through that.
3. What’s a Mean teacher?
   • These are the scary ones.  Ones that might yell and scream at the kids in their class.  They might demean kids in front of others.  They might deal out punishments unevenly or even play favorites where your kid isn’t the favorite.  Or maybe they’re just impatient and won’t answer questions so your child comes home not knowing the material. These teachers can cause lasting damage so we need to keep our eyes and ears open if you think your child has a teacher in this category. 

 
Julie Plagens at Mom Remade has a wonderful article about dealing with bad teachers.  I’ll put a link in my podcast notes. It’s called How to Deal with A Bad Teacher: 15 Strategies to Survive the School Year
That’s a whole lot of strategies but I’m going to go over just a few that I think might really help families in this situation.
 
Wait and See
The first approach would be to wait and see while doing research

• You need to investigate to see if things are really as bad that they seem.  Sometimes our kids and their friends, not to mention other parents, can really blow things up.  Gather information from multiple sources if you possibly can -- class work, opinions from other parents with kids in that class, info about how things are going in other classrooms for that same topic; that sort of thing.
• You might find people who took that teacher's class last year and ask them how they got through the year. They might say "It doesn't get better but stay quiet or it gets worse." Try to find students who did well in the class and ask how they achieved that - ask to borrow their notes if they have any. Ask them if they have any tips on how to do well in the class.
• Another way to research is to volunteer in the classroom if it’s allowed which it often is at the elementary level although since COVID-19 not much is allowed any more. I’d read the teacher’s emails and look over the assignments.  Don’t helicopter, just be aware of what’s being studied and communicated. 
• You should also try to figure out what the teacher’s perspective might be, sometimes it’s not all your child says it is.  Bottomline, research before taking sides.  Even parent rumor mills can vary depending on how different kids reacted to the same teacher.  I had one parent tell me that her son hated a particular teacher he’d had a few years before which made me a little worried but, for my son, she turned out to be one of his most favorite teachers.  Go figure. 
• I just want to say that during this “wait and see” phase, sometimes things do settle down and kids figure out on their own how to get through each day or even start liking the teacher they were complaining about.

 
Communicating with the School
However, if you really feel that things need to be addressed you need to start the next phase which is communicating to the school

• Teacher meetings are the starting point.  Set up a meeting with the teacher and your spouse or partner.
  • As you meet you need to phrase the concerns as issues that require clarification instead of an attack, like “Mr. Jones, I need your help.  I’m a little confused about something.  Annie said _____, but I think she may have misunderstood.  Can you explain it to me?”  This gives the teacher an out but implies you’re watching what’s happening at the same time. You need to tread lightly since alienating your child’s teacher is one of the worst things you can ever do as a parent since your child can suffer as a result.
• If you feel unsatisfied the next step is to have a meeting with the principal or someone above the teacher like the head of a department
  • Ask for a meeting with the administrator and the offending teacher together to voice your concerns.   Nothing makes a teacher angrier than going over their head without giving them a chance to correct things. 
  • In my case, my son’s 4th grade teacher was a fluffy teacher. He and his classmates weren’t learning much at all.  We parents grumbled in the background for a few months as we started to see how little our kids were learning.  She was a new teacher at our school although not a new teacher to teaching, so it took us a while to see things.  A few parents chatted with the principal but nothing happened.  Our comments seemed to be treated as casual parent grumblings which principals here a lot of over the course of the year. It’s part of their job, right?
• Community Pressure
  • As a last resort, if the teacher and the principal won’t listen to you as a parent, talk to other parents and address the situation as a group. There is power in numbers. It makes a statement.
  • In my case, By Feb/March of that year it was apparent that we needed to move to a united front of concerned parents.   There were 5-6 families who strategically set up individual meetings with the principal over a month or so period.  You could set up one meeting with lots of parents but that’s not what we chose to do.  The principal got the message and that teacher wasn’t hired back.  It sounds a little harsh but once a teacher is offered tenure it’s almost impossible in California to get rid of them.  This didn’t help our kids that year but it certainly prevented other families from suffering in future years and we really felt heard which made us feel a little bit better.

Learn to Cope
Lastly, it seems that most of the time your child is just going to have a bad teacher and you have to help them learn how to cope with it. You can’t always have the best teacher, the best principal, or the best school.  I’m sure all of us remember times when we had a bad teacher in our youth, or a bad boss or a bad co-worker.  This is life. There are lessons to be learned about working with difficult people and bad teachers can turn kids into problem solvers with the right love and encouragement from their parents and peers.  As possible solutions you might get extra tutoring, set up study groups, correct homework yourself or become your child’s reading or writing partner.  It’s all extra work to get though the year but figure out what will make the learning happen, don’t let the bad teacher take away a whole year of learning.
 
If your child is 5th grade or older, if at all possible, you want to brainstorm with them on how they can handle the situation themselves.  You don’t want to rescue every time and talk to the teacher for them every time they have a problem.  Lots of kids are afraid of authority figures and need encouragement to stand up and be heard.  What can you do to help?  Feel free to role-play or even have your child write down what they might say to their teacher about an issue.  Step in only after the child has tried on their own.  If they don’t understand something, encourage them to stand up to the teacher and ask for extra help.  It might be really scary and hard which is why I’d suggest some role-playing with how that conversation might go. 
 
That said, sometimes a bad teacher just won’t help a kid learn.  I was talking to a recent college student whose AP Calculus teacher in high school just didn’t seem to know the material and wouldn’t and couldn’t even help them.  They tried talking to the principal with and without parents and nothing changed so the students in that class learned that they had to adapt.  They gathered together in study groups. They traded notes. Some of them had tutors and they traded those notes.  They used Kahn Academy lessons online.  They learned that they could learn without that bad teacher and they all wound up passing that AP exam in spite of that teacher.  It was twice as much work as they should have had to do but they did it. 
 
In another instance, when my younger son was a junior in high school, he struggled with a teacher who was constantly picking on him.  This teacher was in the boring category and my son just hated his class.  He was getting a good grade but came home every day complaining about how much he hated being in that class. 
 
After a few months I decided to challenge him. I know that great teachers have the ability to make one-on-one connections with students.  They are able to do amazing things with them since their students trust them and feel seen.  In this experiment, I decided to encourage my son to flip that where he’s the one who makes the connection with the teacher since this teacher didn’t seem to know him as a person and was picking on him all the time for putting his head on his desk and not participating.  I told him that if he when to his tutorial period with that teacher and had a conversation about ANYTHING, I’d give him money.  Yes, I am not above using money to motivate behavior of things kids don’t know how to do yet and I decided this was one of them. 
 
So, a few days later, he and a basketball friend, who also was in that class, decided to go to tutorial and talk to this teacher who happened to be a basketball coach of one of the girls’ teams.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, they talked about basketball and they even enjoyed the discussion.  You know what happened?  The very next class the teacher was nice and each day after he was too.  That teacher “saw” my son and, you know what, I think my son “saw” him too.  In chatting with him about this he even remembers that he tried harder to participate.   They weren’t the best of friends or anything but things worked out. The best part is that my son learned a life lesson in how making connections can really make a difference.  It was worth every penny I spent!
 
One of the last strategies in Julie Plagen’s article is about having a good attitude.  I love this idea. Listen to what others say but always talk nicely about the teacher in front of your child.  Sometimes when kids hear parents talking trash about a teacher, they’ll use it as an excuse to slack off or worse. 
 
I interviewed a number of people young and old for this podcast from students to parents to teachers.  The discussions were so much fun.  It was interesting that each person could remember a bad teacher or two.  Some teachers didn’t know the material. Some teachers were always unprepared. Some teachers were boring as heck. Some teachers had class pets and treated some other kids unfavorably.  But you know what, all those kids made it through to college and beyond.  They had loving families who supported and encouraged them.  They had parents who would listen to them, help set up and augment their studies, and give them empathy when things were tough.   They learned that life sometimes gave them lemons but, typically, they were able to make lemonade.  Sometimes it was a year or two later but, in the end, they made it.

I know as a parent of younger children; things might seem dire and you have a right to be concerned.  A young dad who has a 5th grade son just heard that his son got stuck in the class of a bad teacher for the third year in a row and is losing his joy of learning.  That sucks.  I’d certainly keep a close eye on that 5th grade teacher early and often.  I even know families, myself included, who’ve found that moving to a different school was worth the bother as a last resort.  I wouldn’t keep moving my kid every time I wasn’t happy with a teacher since it creates lots of other stressors that can be significant, but it’s worth considering. 
 
I just want to finish up by saying getting our kids through school is certainly a journey of ups and downs.  I pray this article has given you ideas for keeping the journey a little smoother. 

THE AUDIO PODCAST IS AVAILABLE HERE:      ​LISTEN
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Do you have a kid who is always seeking attention?  They are pulling on you, saying “Mommy, mommy, watch me!”  Or maybe they try to one up anyone just to make themselves look bigger or better than others.  Maybe they’ll even make things up to do that?
 
I’ve been working with a few parents lately who are at their wits end with this annoying, attention seeking behavior.  No matter how much attention they give that child, the child wants more and more and more.  Sometimes it’s bad enough that other siblings are getting annoyed at how the offending child just keeps butting in and trying to take over, to use up all the air in the room.

What’s up with all that?  My first guess is that the need for attention is real.  They are seeking love, support and care.
 
Three possible contributing factors might be:

• They suffer from low self-esteem, so they make up wild stories or try to out-do others around them to show off and get attention. One friend’s son after hearing his older sister saw a bird out the window immediately added that he saw two birds
• They lack a sense of belonging; they don’t know how to fit in so they try different behaviors that they think might work – they might get really loud or physical like poking their friends with sticks or maybe showing off their Pokémon cards to other kids thinking that’ll make them cool
• Lastly, sometimes they’re just immature and they don’t know when they’ve crossed a boundary of inappropriate behavior.  I just did a podcast about complex kids who have ADHD, Asperger’s and other issues and learned that kids with those issues are often 3-5 years behind in terms of maturity which throws off our parental expectations when we see them interacting with other kids in immature ways.

I do have to admit that all three can be present at the same time – low self-esteem, lack a sense of belonging and immaturity which can really crank things up in your home.  If you have an annoying kid, my heart goes out to you.  However, there’s plenty of positive things you can do so don’t lose hope!
 
When our kids are annoying, we often want to walk the other way, to not deal with the behavior.  We let them keep interrupting, butting into our conversations, doing one-up-manship time and again.  However, if you ignore the behaviors and needs, it can backfire leading to negative behaviors instead and not just getting louder or their stories getting more outrageous but where they start hitting or outright lying or being verbally abusive to you or their friends.  Yikes!  That is not at all what we want but… you’re exhausted and stressed… how do you take steps to deal with this everyday issue in your house?
 
What to do:

• Notice them!
• Remain calm – sometimes the behaviors hit our hot buttons because they are loud and obnoxious.  We need to not react negatively.  Reframe this as an opportunity to learn new behaviors.  I know it’s not easy but you really need to move toward this being something you both have the opportunity to learn from – it’s part of promoting a growth mindset.
• Provide them with a scheduled fixed amount of time just for them, the longer and more regular, the better.  This would be what I call “special time” where the child gets to determine the activity, they do with you whether its playing Legos or Barbies or run through sprinklers or go to the park.  I’d be specific about the when and where so that they can count on the time with you.  For one family the mom had 15 minutes after school for each of her sons.  For another it was once a month an afternoon with just dad or just mom, they rotated and called the events “dates”. Statistics say that the average American parent spends 7 minutes a week with their children.  Yikes!  Do better than average!
• Use empathy If they beg for attention; “I know you’d really like some time with mommy right now.  It’s hard to wait, isn’t’ it?  I can’t wait till Saturday when we can play together.”
• Use praise for any improvements. This would be for incremental progress.  “Wow, I noticed you allowed your sister to talk first at dinner tonight.”  Or, “Thanks for using your inside voice. I could tell you were really trying.”
• Provide the child with special responsibilities and leadership to build self-confidence.  Maybe let them pick out what you have for dinner every Monday night.  Maybe they are responsible for setting up an event for your family for Friday Night Game night.  They pick out the game, set up the pieces, pick out the snacks.  One mom who cooks rice every night let her 9-year-old own making the rice each day.  He felt so impowered!
• This one is SUPER crucial: Take time to talk about what attention is appropriate, use role-play or drama to help them understand how other people might react.  If they were one-upping their sister in our bird example before you need to, after the incident is over, talk about ideas of what else they could have said.  Brainstorm with them after talking to them about how it might make them feel if someone did that to them. A good way of thinking about this would be:
  1. Show empathy
  2. Verbalize what occurred
  3. Help your child come up with a more productive or effective way to get their needs met.
• Lastly, be patient, unlearning the attention seeking will take time!

 
 
Here’s a final idea to help make this process a bit more fun for everyone involved. Set up a non-verbal queue!  If your child is always dominating the conversation and needs to learn to let others have a turn, have a brief Family Meeting with just you and them to brainstorm some signals you can use when the behavior is happening.  You need to think of the signal together so that your child feels a part of the process, don’t’ just decide it for them, make this brainstorming fun.  Maybe you decide to tug on your ear, maybe it’s a little stuffed animal (or a set of them) that sits on the table that you pass to them when you’d like them to let others talk.  It should be something special and subtle.  You might even change the signal to keep things fresh each week. 
 
One mom whose son had a problem with getting too rambunctious at their cousin’s house brainstormed ahead of an upcoming visit.  They chose a special bear that they’d put in her son’s backpack.  If he started getting too ramped up, she could just lovingly give him the bear.  She didn’t need to say anything.  It worked wonders!  They get to pick which signal they take each time they go but, you know what, things are getting so that they don’t need it.  It’s been helping him see when things are getting out of control all on his own.  Yeah mom! Yeah son!
 

THE AUDIO PODCAST IS AVAILABLE HERE:      ​LISTEN
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Do you have kids who are always running to the car and saying: “I’m first!”?  Or maybe they argue over who mom or dad reads to first at night?  How about who gets to sit where at the dinner table?  Or who does dad pour the catsup on French fries first?  I know my boys would have a battle each time we got into an elevator over who gets to push the buttons.  It’s exhausting, isn’t it?  You might even say it “drains your energy” if you’re a Love and Logic parent. 

In this podcast I want to help you turn that constant bickering into an opportunity for modeling cooperation and fairness.  Ha!  There’s no way that can happen in your house, you say?  I challenge you to try a few of these tactics and get back to me and let me know if they worked for you and your family.  I’ll bet you one hour of free coaching if I’m not right, otherwise, you leave me a nice review on this podcast.  Deal?  Deal. 
 
First, determine a list of issues your kids are competing at.  Some of you can probably do this off the top of your head the issues are so obvious but, if you need to, observe them for a few days and take notes till you have at least 3-4 things to talk about.   Here is a list one parent sent me:

• Who showers first
• Who brushes their teeth first
• Who sits on the couch first and where they get to sit

 
Next, hold a Family Meeting at a time when there are no competitions going on, maybe after dinner or just ask everyone to come into the Family Room for a few minutes.  There’s an entire podcast, #17 on how to run Family Meetings but here’s a brief review:
 
Step 1: Set the meeting – meaning the location and duration.  The meeting will be really short for young ones 4 and under, 3-5 minutes, but for older kids it could be 15-20 minutes.  Don’t make it too long!  In this case,  I’ll choose Sunday evening right after dinner.
 
Step 2: Start the meeting, list the issues
Have your list of competition challenges ready and ask for input of any others you might have missed.  For this Sunday’s meeting let’s say we just work one issue, which seats the family sit in at dinner table.  I have to chuckle, this sounds so simple, right?  But I know there are plenty of petty issues like this that your kids fight about, right?
 
Step 3: Brainstorm
Take one example at a time and think about new ways to solve the problem.  In our example of where to sit at the dinner table, have everyone come up with several ways to solve it.  It could be a rotation every night or you could choose seats for a week at a time.  You can talk about how to figure out who gets to choose first -- rock-paper-scissors or pulling numbers from a hat.  All options!  You could even throw in some silly ones like having a “no chair night” where you have a picnic on the floor once a week.  Be creative, it’s way more fun and engaging!
 
Step 4: Select Ideas
Once you’ve brainstormed lots of ideas, go through a process to select which ones you’re going to try first. Be sure to keep the list of full ideas since this is the START of the process of selecting just the first one to try.  In this step also make sure to decide how long the first trial will last – a day, a week, a month?  I’m guessing that most families will probably try something for about a week when they first attempt to do this.  In our example, let’s say we choose seats for one week at a time and choose by using numbers from a hat. 
 
Step 5: Experiment
Now comes the fun part, whatever method was chosen, try it out for the agreed upon duration.  In our case, the 4 of us pull numbers from a hat and we choose a seat for one whole week.  As the week progresses, take notes on what different people think. If your kids are able, have them make a poster to put in the kitchen with each person’s name and a box under it with that person’s current positive, negative or neutral feedback.  Feel free to use stickers or magnets so that people can change their minds throughout the week.
 
Step 6: Review & Revise
At this point you’re going to schedule a follow up Family Meeting where you formally review how your experiment worked.  If the feedback is great, great!  If it’s not, then you go back to the lists you came up with and see what other options you could try; you can even take in new feedback. 
 
As you can tell, the important theme here is that it’s an experiment, it’s not set in stone.  We often try something once and when it doesn’t work out, we give up.  We want to model for our kids that life is all about evolving experiments that should eventually lead to acceptable solutions all around but that it takes work.  You should model that the work is worth it!
 
In our chair example, let’s say Joe is happy but Michael isn’t.  Mom and dad are fine anywhere so they are neutral.  If someone isn’t happy, we’re going to look at the list.  What can we modify about how we pick for the next week that can make Michael happy next week and get Joe to be at least neutral?  Since Joe drew the best number from a hat last week, we decide that Michael will go first this week without choosing from a hat at all.  We also decided that since dad is responsible for getting refills that he’ll have a permanent seat that’s closest to the counter so now we just rotate through 3 seats.  I think you get the drift.  We’ll try this new setup for another week and then meet up again for more feedback and review.
 
Step 7: Celebrate!
When you’re able to make headway on issues celebrate!  Often in our busy lives we make progress and just keep bulldozing right on past a success.  Take time.  Make it fun!  You don’t have to do it every time but sometimes it is really great for building a family culture that is productive, caring and enjoyable to be in.  An ice cream party or trip to a fun place that everyone loves.  Do something to show it was worth it!
 
Just to give you a flavor for the process, I’m going to tell you about one brave family with two little girls who are 4 and 2.  The older one is really the competitive one and wants everything first but little sister at 2 isn’t going to just let big sister push her around.  Sound familiar? 

Dad is usually on duty in the mornings and those girls immediately start competing for dad’s attention – who gets their hair done first, who sits at the table first, who gets milk on their cereal first, you get the idea.  The same sort of things happened at bedtime with brushing teeth, taking a bath, reading books, you name it. 

​Well, dad sat them down one morning for a 3-minute Family Meeting cause they’re young, to brainstorm what they could do.  He proposed that one girl could go first in the morning and the other in the evening.  Would that work for them?  They then proceeded to pick which girl was the morning and which was the evening girl.  Excellent!  That morning went so smooth!  The older daughter was first so she was really happy and the younger one was fine with it.  Then came the evening and the older daughter wanted to be first at something.  It only took at bit of calm and loving reminding from dad as to what the agreement was and she was ok.  Yeah!  Progress.  This worked well for morning and evening for a week or more; however, they started competing so much for non-morning/evening issues that both mom and dad were at their wits end and felt like failures.  Oh my!
 
After some encouragement they decided to hold that next Family Meeting to expand the morning/evening choices to encompass an experiment where each girl would be first all day for everything and then they’d rotate the next day for the other girl to be first.  They were going to print out a calendar that the girls could color their days so they could always know who was first or second. 

How did Round 2 go?  Really well!  Round 1 seemed hopeful but they really did need Round 2 in ways they couldn’t have predicted without the Round 1 experiment.  This family recently had a Round 3 to figure out that they need to cross off the days on the calendar when they are done so that their younger daughter could visually see which day was which a little better.  Yeah! 
 
I hope and pray some of these ideas will help you tone down the competition level in your home.  It does take extra time and effort to set things up sometimes but it’s that extra effort than can make all the difference.
 

THE AUDIO PODCAST IS AVAILABLE HERE:      ​LISTEN

Many parents get very upset when we catch our children lying, stealing or cheating.  In this podcast I want to go over why kids might lie, what strategies we might use to address the lying and how age might influence our reactions. Lastly, I’ll talk about how to repair trust which has been broken and what consequences might be appropriate.
 
These situations are stressful for every parent and throw us into a vast array of emotions ranging from anger to disappointment and hopelessness depending on the age of the child and the frequency of the offenses.  This whole issue attacks our basic tenet of trust.  When a child lies, they break our trust.  When our kids are little it’s fairly easy to maneuver them in the right direction. As they age, the breaking of trust becomes more and more difficult to repair. 
 
When we act very authoritarian and harshly punish such behavior, it often has the opposite affect and winds up increasing the bad behavior. 
 
 
Why does lying bug us?
Honesty is critical to healthy relationships, having integrity and resolving problems.
Dishonesty can lead to heaps of trouble in the long run which nobody wants for their kids.
 
Why do kids lie?  What is it about lying that comes so easily into our kids’ lives?  In researching for this topic, I found that there seem to be categories for lying that can help us to put a child’s behavior into a better perspective.  

1. Test out a new behavior – This is when they just want to see your reaction.  What will mom do when they steal the candy from the pantry?  I think of this for little kids mostly who are new to lying and its repercussions.  But could be a teen who is trying to test the boundaries in different ways to see if they get caught or not.  Taking a beer from the fridge or talking online with a stranger. 
2. Enhance self-esteem and gain approval – I call this the Bragging Syndrome where an insecure kid tries to puff themselves up to impress others.  They tell their friends they’re the best at something or own something that others might want.  They want to fit in so they inflate themselves in ways they think will help them but often times it backfires and their self-esteem takes even more hits.
3. For personal gain – This might be cheating on a test or taking money from someone’s wallet.   It could be shoplifting for items you can’t or aren’t allowed to have.  Maybe it’s setting up accounts on Instagram and Snap Chat that aren’t allowed.  You know what the most common lie I hear from parents for this category is these days?  Sneaking computer time and lying about it.
4. To avoid punishment – let’s say your kid broke something, or colored a wall with markers, maybe pushed their annoying little sibling over.  They are afraid you’ll punish them so when we ask: “Who did this?” you get a: “Not me!”  Don’t be surprised.
   When I was about 9 or 10 I broke my mom’s hair dryer but I’m from such a big family that when all of us said: “Not me!” I was never found out.  I had no idea what the punishment would have been, I just knew I didn’t want it and isn’t it amazing that 50 years later I still remember the incident.  It was an accident, but it turned into something much more.
5. To avoid doing something – When I asked parents in my Parenting Decoded FB group about lying examples I have to say, this is probably the most common.  Kids lie about brushing their teeth, washing their hands, finishing their homework, putting away their clothes, cleaning their room, turning in their homework, logging off the computer, taking out the trash.  They’d just rather not do any of those things, so they lie about it and say they did.
6. Get the focus off themselves – Sometimes if a kid is depressed or not doing well, they will say things that we parents want to hear. 
   • Are you feeling ok today?
   • Did you take your medicine?
   • Did you finish your homework?
   • Did you get enough sleep?
   • How are you doing with your friends at school?
   
   

You can imagine the answers from a kid who is struggling in any of those areas. You later find out they said what you wanted to hear and are hurt and/or mad that they “lied” to you. 

1. Speak before they think – with some kids who have ADHD they sometimes just blurt things out without a filter and without actually thinking about it and it comes out sounding like a lie.  If they took a few cycles to think, it would come out differently, but sometimes they don’t those cycles.
2. Spare people’s feelings with white lies – This is a tough one since it requires taking into account other people’s feelings.   “I really like your new outfit”, “You’re really good at drawing.” “I love my present from you.”

 
 
Ok, now that we have a reference guide for different types of lies,

What do we do about them?
 
Well, in a blog from Child-Psych.org they elaborate on three main goals for parents when dealing with lying:
 
First, getting to the truth in a positive way, then figuring out how to make amends and, lastly, how to learn from the mistake of lying.
 

• Know the truth and have kids share it – it’s really important that there is trust in the household.  If kids have a problem they are afraid to share about, they will be tempted to lie especially if they think there might be a harsh punishment coming.  Not having harsh punishments for telling the truth while they are young will help build trust so that as they get older, they’re more likely to share and not lie.  You want to try setting up rewards for honesty which in the case of lying is that there will be less of a consequence for telling the truth than hiding it.
  In the example of kids not washing their hands when they say they did and you know they didn’t, instead of putting them on the spot and calling them a liar, you can gently say something like, “Hmmm… it seems like I see some dirt still on your hands.  Can you please re-wash them for me?” Or they didn’t do their homework and you can see their unfinished work on the table, “Wow, this is so strange, is this the homework that was supposed to be turned in?  Did you want to tell me about it?  Is there something you need help with?  I won’t be mad if you tell me since in our family telling the truth is really an important value.”
  
  I’d recommend having a Family Meeting occasionally to talk about your family values and how honesty is promoted and protected.  You might even set up a family honor code and post it so everyone can be reminded of it.  The really important thing is that it’s discussed and debated by everyone in the family, not just an edict coming down from mom and dad.
  
  
• Kids can make amends – if the child’s behavior affects someone or something then you need to encourage making amends.  If they’ve broken a window and lied about it, paying for a new window would be appropriate.  If they lied and it impacted someone like they hit their sister or ate all the cupcake toppings that were to be used for an upcoming party, they have to repair the damage.  I’m a firm believer than forcing a kid to say “Sorry” in a resentful, under the breath tone isn’t helpful at all.  It only creates embarrassment and resentment.  If sister was hurt, maybe doing some chores for her or letting her play with some of your toys might help repair ill-will created when the child hurt their sibling.  We want to teach our kids that apologies from the heart are effective.  It could be writing a letter, drawing a picture or baking cookies instead of a forced “I’m sorry.”
  
  
• Kids learn from mistakes – let kids know that we all make mistakes.  Lying is just a mistake that we get to help figure out how not to do in the future.  We need to talk to them about how honesty will get us further in life than lying and cheating.  Brainstorm with them how to recover from making bad choices when they lie or cheat.  If they get caught cheating on an exam or copying someone else’s work, what can they learn?  Keep calm.  Find out what’s really going on instead of heading right into punishing.  Kids lie when they feel cornered, help them get out of the corner by spending time with empathy and love to figure out the root cause. 

 
Age based Ideas on Dealing with Lying
Now that we talked about the three goals, I want to go over how we might apply them at different ages. Parents.com wrote a useful age-based guide that I’ll go over briefly here and reference in my podcast notes. 
 
Toddlers and Preschoolers (Ages 2-4)
Lots of little kids can’t even quite tell truth from lying so these years are critical for adults to set the stage that kids don’t need to rely on lying to solve problems.  Kids are going to experiment so you gently and diplomatically send a response back instead of “Did you eat the cookie?” which leads to an immediate tantrum or meltdown, try something like “Did somebody eat a cookie?  Those mustn’t be crumbs on your chin.”  No need to have consequences but I might pull out some books to read at bedtime that talk about lying. Once they hit about 4, they are more aware of the concept and might introduce a whopper or two.  One of my parents used a wonderful technique when her son lied by saying they were going for ice cream when they for sure weren’t.  After he announced it this wise mom said, “I know you wish that were true.  I love ice cream too.” Then she just kept moving on.  It’s common at this age that wishful thinking becomes statements that appear to be lies.  It’s great to treat them as wishful thinking in a kind and generous way.  
 
School Age (ages 5-8)
At this stage they tend to tell more lies to test what they can get away with.  For example, One 5-year-old was testing her new abilities so much that she was proudly telling her little brother she was a better liar than he was.  Too funny.  Mom and dad will have some fun dealing with that.  At this stage though most lies are easy to detect – they didn’t brush their teeth, didn’t do their reading, didn’t check over their spelling, watched more TV than allowed.  Talk openly and continue to read stories together.  Don’t forget to praise them when they are honest. Be careful at this stage that you’re modeling honesty yourself.  If you tell kids to pretend they are younger than they are to get a discount meal at a restaurant or a ticket at a theme park, you need to consider what message that is sending to your child’s growing sense of right and wrong?  I know lots of families do this, but at what cost?
 
Tweens (9-12)
I always consider these foundational years for cementing your relationship before teen mindset and independence sets in.  Kids at this stage are pretty savvy and have already a strong sense of right and wrong.  When they lie, they may have strong feelings of guilt.  Being available for conversations about honesty is super helpful.  Talk about how honesty impacts our lives.  When they mess up, brainstorm about it.  Have some special time with that child for a gentle discussion.  At this age you talk about things like “little while lies” and how to use them if they’re needed to protect people’s feelings.  Maybe brainstorm if there are ways to be thoughtful without using white lies to get by. 
 
I know lots of parents at this stage are hit by lies relating to computer use.  “Yes, I’m just studying with my friends.” While you can see they have a YouTube window open.  Or, “I need to use my computer for a project this evening.” And you find out they’re on Minecraft instead and they’ve hidden it from you.  Or, in more serious offenses, they’ve wandered all over the internet chatting with strangers and creating social media accounts that you can’t even begin to figure out where and how many there are. 
 
One thing I can say is for you to take a deep breath.  Trust is earned and you have to rollback things to allow your kids to regain your trust.  In the case of computer issues it might be that you move their electronics into a public place.  This online learning that we’re in right now has really messed everything up since we really want all electronics in public places anyway but right now it’s almost impossible to do that.  One mom was thinking about removing YouTube from the school laptop, but her son would miss out on studies.  Maybe it’s that they put YouTube only on the computer in the Family Room until they come up with a better way to know they can trust him to make better choices. 
 
Teens (13-18)
In this older stage we need to do that work to listen and modify.  If there’s a lot of lying at this stage it’s a call for help.  Your child doesn’t feel safe telling you things and you need to get the door open.  Have you been too punitive in the past?  Did you blow up when there’s a problem with lying or cheating?  If you’re behavior makes them want to take a step back from you, that’s the wrong direction.  Figure out ways they can trust you won’t blow up if they have something you’re not going to like hearing.  For some this is setting aside special time to brainstorm but for others you might need to involve a counselor to help negotiate things.
 
How do you encourage honesty?

1. Let them know truth is easier and reduces consequences especially when planning ahead. 
   1. Say your kid has been drinking at a party.  They could lie about it but you want them to call to be picked up so you have to strike a balance and have an open dialogue ahead of time, so no lying is needed.
   2. If they don’t turn in an assignment, find out why.  Was it too hard?  Did they have too much homework?  Were they bored with the work?  Talk about what could be done about it.
   3. If they cheated and copied someone’s test or paper and got caught.  Talk to them about what was up with that.  Are they feeling too much pressure to perform?  Do they need assistance to catch up?  Again, are they overloaded? Bored? Tired? Bullied? Try to get to the bottom of the why instead of just punishing the deed.  Every time at this stage you’re able to get to the heart of what’s really going on its another avenue you’ve set up in being able to communicate with your teen.
2. Let kids know we don’t expect perfection - Parents could say, “I’m going to ask you a question and maybe you’re going to tell me something I don’t really want to hear. But remember, your behavior is not who you are. I love you know matter what, and sometimes people make mistakes. So, I want you to think about giving me an honest answer.” Giving kids a chance to reflect on this may lead to them telling the truth.
3. Don’t label your kid a liar, it’s the behavior, not the kid.  Don’t set up your child for feeling bad about themselves that we wind up setting up a pattern of lying, as if we expect them to lie since they’ve been labeled a liar.
4. Don’t corner your child – if you already know they lied and put them on the spot.  If you know they didn’t do their homework just say it.  “I know you didn’t do it.  Let’s talk about why that’s not a good idea and what to do about it.”

 
 
Ideas for Repairing Trust
For those of you who know Love and Logic techniques one thing to integrate into the repair of trust can be Energy Drain.  It really is an Energy Drain when you’re lied to.  You can use this with empathy and love to allow them to fill back up your energy by doing acts of service or chores around the house.  Maybe they’ll clean out the garage or scrub those garbage cans that go to the street.  One of my boys cleaned the gutters when he broke our trust.  He was a great kid and just happened to make a poor choice.  He was glad to do that chore to fill back up our energy that he had drained and get himself right with us again.  If you want more examples take a listen Episode 10 on  Consequences. 
 
I want to finish up telling you a story about Cheese Pizza.  It’s from Natasha at Reading Is Better Than Chocolate.  She was raised in an authoritarian household.  They were to do as they were told, no questions, no arguments.  Mistakes were punished harshly and lies were included in that.  Her response?  She just weighed up the odds of getting caught and lied at every turn.  Yikes.  Now that she’s a mom she needed to come up with a vastly better plan especially since she had made lots of poor choices by the time she was an early adult.  

Her idea as a mom was to cultivate a program of trust and love from the get-go.  She and her son developed a code word that they agreed upon ahead of time. Whenever her son said the code word it would create a magic spell where mom would have to listen calmly and NOT lose it.  They had fun choosing a word together.  They settled on CHEESE PIZZA.  Well, they posted that word in their kitchen on the fridge so everyone could see it with some simple rules that when the word was said that mom would take a deep breath, count to five and then not lose it.  In only 3 days her son came home from school and said CHEESE PIZZA!  Mom took her breath, counted to five and they sat down.  He had torn his new trousers at school.  He was able to tell his mom that he was happily playing on the playground when it happened.  She gave him a squeeze and thanked him for being truthful. 
 
She’s hoping that setting this up when he’s young they’ll have lots of practice so if the issues get bigger than holes in knees they’ll have something to use to help them through.  This story doesn’t say to let your kids get away with not helping to pay for new pants, which I think you should brainstorm how that happens, but it’s about getting to the heart of your child so that they feel you’re on their side and they’re safe to tell you even hard things.  Life will get hard and how we respond is going to impact how and when our kids are willing to come to us.  Make your own plans for CHEESE PIZZA in your house. 
 
Natasha has a wonderful list of books in her article that you can use to talk to your kids about lying and I’ll put the link in my podcast along with another article about books and honesty from ChildrensLitLove.com.  Books can be so helpful as jumping off points for discussions with our kids especially when they’re younger.  One book parents of teens and tweens can certainly learn from is “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk”.  Communication is key to maintaining a loving relationship that will last a lifetime!
 
I hope these ideas on how to handle lies and lying in your house are helpful.  Please share this with other families.  If you’d like a transcript of this or any of my podcasts, they are always attached to my episode notes and on my website. Feel free to email questions to [email protected] or join my Facebook Group for more chatter on parenting topics.

​Resources Mentioned:

• How to Handle Your Child’s Dishonesty by Child-Psych.org
• Why Kids Lie from ChildMind.org by ChildMind.org
• Cheese Pizza Idea from Natasha at ReadingIsBetterThanChocolate.com
• Lying Guide By Age from Parents.com
• Honor Code Ideas by ReadBrightly.com
• Favorite Picture Books on Honesty from ChildrensLitLove.com
• How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Faber and Mazlish

 

THE AUDIO PODCAST IS AVAILABLE HERE:      ​LISTEN​​​

Holidays and gift giving can bring about so much stress to families who are sucked into the commercialism of our current situation.  In this podcast I want to give you all some hints about making gift giving a more heartfelt experience not only from you as the giver but also how to create an attitude of gratitude in our kids who are receiving those gifts.  I’ll also go over some ideas about how to handle sibling-to-sibling giving as well as extended family situations which can easily get messy.  I’m recording this in the holiday season, but it really applies to gifting at birthdays, graduations or any other type of event. 

As I was researching, several articles offered a concept that I really thought could make gift-giving much simpler and less commercial.   It’s called the “Four Gift Tradition” where just four gifts are exchanged from parents to kids: something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read. Isn’t that sweet?  It sets an expectation of getting gifts but a clear limit on how many and that there are different categories, not just one category of “something you want” as happens in many families. 

I also came across a fabulous article by Kelly at Happy You, Happy Family™ called “The Most Meaningful Gifts for Kids Who Have Everything”.  I’m going to go over a few of her wonderful ideas but I want to encourage you all to read the full article that I’ll post in my show notes from www.happyyouhappyfamily.com.

First, you want to keep in mind that kids who already have all their needs met, they get bored with new stuff quickly.  Those toys we spent so much time, energy and money picking out frequently just move to the back of the closet within a month.  It’s so frustrating.  We feel our kids are so ungrateful or spoiled, right?  I remember buying the Star Wars BB-8 remote controlled robot and, after the first week, it just sat there.  Ugh!  What was I doing wrong?  It sure felt like I was wasting my money.  How could I improve my gift giving?

Kelly says, research shows that after a while the human brain gets used to new things. It adapts so much that the new things become not new pretty quickly.  Oh dear.  How do we counter that?  This is the part I love about Kelly’s article, it focuses on giving gifts that create memories and experiences!  We all might have tried a few art kits or construction kits over the years like I did when my boys were growing up, but I never really focused on gifts for creating memories and experiences, but I really should have. 

I’m going to run through some of the ideas from her article, see what resonates with you.  There are way more in the whole article, but I want to help get some ideas flowing.

The first fun one is Monthly Boxes of Fun.  There are lots of companies that offer some cool and creative kits to come once a month. You can select based on age and interests.  A few Kelly mentions are:

• Kiwi Crate – really creative craft and building kits by age and topic
• Little Passports – where a fictional penpal sends letters once a month from around the world and your child can track on a map where the penpal is that month
• KidArtLit  - sends a hardcover picture book combined with art supplies for a family project that is related to the book

Cool!  Fun!

The next category is Conversation and Everyday Kits. The ideas are pretty simple and not expensive but involve some setup to get them to gift-wrapping stage.

• Create a conversation kit you can have at the family dinner table every night.  Your kids can have fun pulling conversation ideas out of a mason jar or bowl.  Kelly sells printable cards, but you can also find other sets of cards to print yourself or make up your own to put in a decorated jar, box or bowl.  
• Create a family playlist of favorite songs or dance songs or whatever category you choose.  If you have kids who are old enough, have your kids create playlists for each other or for a particular event coming up.  You can print the list out and put it in an envelope so there’s something to open.
• Set up a journal for you and your child.  Pass it back and forth, writing notes and thoughts to each other each day or each week.
• Write letters.  This one can create really wonderful memories and is one of my favorites.  Instead of shopping for gifts, take that hour and sit down to write a letter of gratitude and love for family members.  I’m talking paragraphs, not a simple card that just says, “Love you so much, Mom.”  Making time to slow down and really formulate loving thoughts about each other is such a precious gift. You can put them in envelopes in stockings or under the tree.  Easy.

 
When it comes to giving gifts that create memories besides writing letters, I think the winner is Activities with Time since these can build memories in ways that “stuff” can’t.  There are a few different ways to “gift” time, some are done inside the home, others outside. 

Family At-Home Time
These can be fun kits you put together that revolve around doing things at your home.

• Movie Night in a Box – full of themed candy, popcorn and stuff to go with the movie
• Game Night – pick a new game where you can all play with no electronics that you print invitations out for and include plenty of snacks and treats to eat while you play
• Puzzles – my favorite!  Get a new puzzle or borrow someone’s where you just enjoy being together as you figure out where the pieces go
• Garden Kit – wrap up a whole kit with things to grow, dirt and tools so you can plant together.  Pick out flower bulbs or plants or veggies that your kids love to watch grow. 
• Fun Times coupon book– this one would be a booklet with things like “a pillow fight”, “staying up 30 minutes later”, “pick what’s for dinner” or “taking a mental health day from school”.
• Teaching dates – if you have a special skill like wood working, knitting, baking, welding, painting, sewing, glass blowing, that your child is eying to do with you.  Set up a coupon for teaching them that skill.

Family Time with Places and Events Outside the Home
Many of us take our kids to events but we forget to make them special or seem like gifts.  Make a family event special by having a special announcement of it in a card or letter.  Let your kids open it to reveal what it is.  Here are some ideas that are in this category, some of them have to be done after COVID but I have to say that there are some cool virtual events to be had these days so search around the internet.

• Take them to play
• Take them to a movie or arrange to see the new releases that are being streamed as they come out
• Watch a sporting event or other event together
• Enroll in a class - take a class together where you both learn something new that you both want to learn 
• Take a tour
• Take a hike or do a scavenger hunt
• Go on a camping trip
• Give a gift of membership to their favorite museum
• Set up a Splash Day or Mud Day – plan an event with invitations where the whole family can get soaking wet running through puddles, sit in the mud and make mud pies.  I’m talking really wet, dirty and something your family doesn’t normally do, not the everyday type play your kids might do on their own.  Something like a “cover dad in mud” challenge.

 
If you choose any of these “Activities with Time”, I’d encourage you to make sure you take plenty of photos so that you can cement the memories via an album or a screensaver in a place where everyone can see them.
I could go on and on, Kelly has a HUGE list of more ideas still.  Those are just to whet your appetite.
 
 
Don’t Forget Mom and Dad
I do want to move along and cover the other side of this gift giving experience. What about you?   I know I tend to think of myself last even though I spend hours thinking about what the rest of my family might need or want.  Some years were a little awkward when my family all got a load of gifts and there were a meager set for mom.  It made me ask myself, whose fault is that?  I was teaching them about taking but not about giving.  I had to up my own game and let them know that I was worth thinking about gifts for.  I decided I needed to tell them so that I could model for them what they should be doing at gift giving events like birthdays and holidays.  Our kids aren’t born knowing this stuff, so we need to communicate with them. 

When my boys got to high school and college, a time in their lives when they might be busy doing lots of other things with friends rather than with family, I went bold and put only two things on my Christmas list:

1. A CD of some new Christmas music
2. Time, opened ended to do what I wanted with them

What a joy and what great memories I was able to create with my Gift of Time presents.  One year I got to take a high school boy to a parenting lecture on sleep by a scientist and sleep expert.  There’s no way I could have given him an hour lecture on sleep but he gladly came with me and learned a lot.  He even asked a question from the audience of about 200 people.  Was that really a gift, you might ask?  Well, to me it was!

Another memory from my Gift of Time was going to Disneyland with just one son while he was in college in LA.  Yes, I had to fly to get there but it was worth it.  It poured but we slugged it out, buying cheap Mickey ponchos and wringing out our socks we were so drenched.   He took an entire day to be with just me.  It was so precious. 

What can you ask your family for?  What fun activity do YOU want to do with them?  That they can create a coupon for you?  Maybe a hike with no whining?  A trip to the beach?  Maybe they create a Christmas playlist on Pandora or Spotify for you?  Be creative!  Ask for experiences, acts of service or my favorite, a letter to you about the wonderful things they loved about you this past year.  If they can’t write yet, have them draw you and the family. 

However, I have to say you really, really need to model parent giving for your kids. While they are young, they need to be helped and encouraged in selecting gifts for parents.  What I mean is where dad helps them select presents for mom and mom helps them select presents for dad.  One young dad has had his young sons help him select a nice bracelet on Amazon after taking his boys looking at a shopping mall. 

Whatever you do, don’t just buy presents for your spouse, or any member of your family for that matter, and say that they’re from your kids, have them participate.  If writing a letter, making coupons or drawing pictures is what they decide to do, make sure they’re done and wrapped and ready for gift-giving time.  Model the love of giving!
 
Sibling Gifts
Now let’s move on to another gift giving topic.  Gifts for Siblings.  Our kids are trained to expect items from parents but what about getting gifts from siblings?  When and how do we encourage this?  I’d say at about 5 years old and beyond is a good time to help your kids figure out how to give gifts to each other.  You might give them the money to do this, but I would certainly give them a budget if you take that route.  If you happen to be following the money recommendations from my podcast on Money, they could use money from their Spend-Save-Share jar or, if they’re older, from their allowance. The most appropriate category would be to use the “Spend” part of their money since “Share”’s intension is to share outside the home but, do what you have to do. 

Have your kids agree on a spending limit or a type of gift like board games, books, or only handmade gifts so they are in the same ballpark.  Sometimes one child is overly generous, and another stingier child can take advantage of them, so a target limit is probably best. 
 
Grandparents and Extended Family Giving TO Your Kids
Next up is certainly a challenge for some families, gift exchanges with grandparents and extended families.  When you have young children, I think it’s best if you give clear gift giving guidelines for grandparents, aunts and uncles and other special family friends.  Set a dollar, quantity or size limit but try as hard as you can to be up front about what is reasonable. 

You all know I love Family Meetings.  I would actually gather those extended family members in person or on Zoom to discuss what’s reasonable.  If they are part of the decision making, then you might have more success in getting compliance than trying to say what you want and having it ignored.  Relatives ignoring our pleas for present limits is the most common problem I’ve heard, so try a Family Meeting to see if it helps.

Whether you talk about it in a Family Meeting or not, I would also encourage relatives to give experiences instead of physical gifts, something to look forward to in the future.  As kids get to be tweens and teens lots of families start in on the gift-card-exchange bandwagon because it’s easy and it’s something, but a special lunch with grandma could be more meaningful.  If grandma lives far away, get creative and have a Zoom lunch where grandma picks the menu and sends it ahead of time for them to eat together.  One of our family friends took our boys to Petroglyphs every year to paint a Christmas plate.  It was so special. 

If you have a difficult time with relatives who give an overwhelming number of gifts and they are NOT present at the holiday, then I’d encourage you to spread the gift opening out over time so that your kids aren’t overwhelmed and wind up ignoring the thoughtfulness of those who kindly shopped for them.

Large Families and Groups
The last category I wanted to touch on is large family groups and ideas about what to do.  I’m from a very large family and money was always tight which made gifts such a challenge.  However, I know lots of other people with extended families they feel they have to not only buy presents for everyone in the group but have to compete to give more expensive gifts than they can afford.  Here are some ideas for those of you in similar situations.  My first idea is to encourage moving everyone to pulling names from a hat and having a spending limit set.

As my family grew, we started out with pulling names but moved on to that Gift Exchange where we all brought the same dollar value gift and picked numbers to open gifts and could choose to steal from others or open a new gift.  Other families do White Elephant where you all bring something you have that you’re not using anymore and wrap it up and do the same number picking. 

When my siblings and I all started having kids, we all agreed that there wouldn’t be any sibling gifts, just gifts for the nieces and nephews.  Later, even the nieces and nephews drew names so there weren’t so many gifts.  Lastly, my siblings and I all decided we would save our money and go out to dinner or an event as a group later on the next year.  We were able to have some really fun experiences in the name of Christmas months after Christmas was over. 

The point of all of this is to bring some fun and creativity into the gift giving, to create memories of joy instead of a drudge of buying for 10 or 20 or 30 people presents they probably don’t really need or, sometimes, even want.
 
Fun Theme Holiday Giving
The last category I wanted to mention whether you use it for your immediate family or extended family is setting up a “theme” for your holiday where everyone participating uses that theme for giving.  You can do any of these with the Gift Exchange Swap I just mentioned. 

Here’s a quick list:

• Board games
• Books
• DIY gifts – handmade by YOU
• Event tickets
• Gift cards/certificates
• Handmade items – bought locally or online
• Local products only
• Movies and/or movie-themed gifts
• Personalized items
• Puzzles
• Specialty food
• Ugly Christmas sweaters
• Wine and wine-themed gifts
• Made in the USA
• Anything blue (or whatever color you choose)​

Any of these ideas could make for some good laughs and memories. 

Say THANKS
Whatever happens with your family and gift giving make sure that if you or your child receive gifts that you all write letters of thanks to go with them.  These days even though an email of thanks is getting more acceptable, I still favor old-fashioned, hand-written notes.  It’s your job as a parent to model thanks as well as giving. 
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I hope and pray some of these ideas will allow you to make any season of giving and receiving less stressful and more heartfelt.  It does take extra time and effort to set things up sometimes but it’s that extra effort than can make all the difference.